


Izanami

by orphan_account



Category: Holy Trinity (YouTube RPF)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:24:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6231325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account





	1. Chapter 1

Grace loves Hannah. She loves her so much that most of the time she can’t bear to look at it directly, for fear it will burn her up. She jokes with Hannah and insults her and hardly ever says the words because they’re so completely inadequate for describing how she feels and somehow ‘Eat shit!’ conveys it so much better.  
There are times though, when they lie together in the middle of the night, sweating and sated and tangled up in each other like a Gordian knot, that Grace stops joking, looks Hannah in the eye and tells her. Those are the nights she drops all her defences and lets Hannah see her heart, and the vulnerability of it is both terrifying and addictive. Grace knows if she didn’t need Hannah so much, she’d run, but the thought of being without Hannah scares her way more than the thought of Hannah hurting her.  
Hannah loves her back. No, that isn’t right. Hannah worships her. Grace catches her sometimes, in unguarded moments, staring at Grace with the goofiest look of absolute awe and devotion, as though she still can’t believe that she’s allowed to be in Grace’s presence. Hannah has no problem with ‘I love you’ and tells her at least six times a day and Grace smiles every time.  
It’s probably not healthy, their devotion to each other, but neither of them care. They have each other and Grace is so determined to make sure that never changes that she spends a ridiculous amount of money on a ring, gets down on one knee and gives a long, rambling, tearful speech that in the end boils down to begging Hannah never to leave her. By the end Hannah is on the floor with her, hands covering her mouth and tears of joy sliding down her face, and when Grace slides the ring onto her finger, Hannah breaks down into full blown sobbing only moments before Grace does. It’s the weirdest sex they’ve ever had, including the time with the Dutch sex toy Mamrie bought them as a joke. They lie together afterwards, exhausted and tear-streaked, and laugh like idiots at how dramatic they managed to make something that was such a foregone conclusion that Mamrie and Tyler were running a pool on how long it would take.  
Hannah outs them in her first MDK after Grace proposes. Grace watches it as soon as it’s posted and laughs happily.  
“Boop boop!” Hannah says into the camera, pulling the cork on a champagne bottle. The diamond on her finger sparkles and Hannah’s grin could probably light a small house. There are the usual jokes and drinking and then, just to make it obvious to the terminally unobservant among her viewers, Hannah carefully removes the ring, kisses it and loops in onto a silver chain around her neck before plunging her hands into whatever culinary disaster she’s attempting this week. The video proceeds as normal and Grace can just feel the Hartosexuals screaming at the screen for Hannah to tell them who gave her the ring.  
After the ‘cooking’ is finished, Hannah washes her hands, dries them and slides the ring off it’s chain and back onto her finger and flashes another heart-stopping smile at the camera.  
“Real talk, guys,” she says, happy and messy and totally wasted, “It’s not a prank. I’m getting married. I’m the one telling you because my beautiful fiancée has a habit of trolling you guys and I didn’t…” Hannah trails off frowning adorably.  
“Grace, what if they think I’m trolling them now?” She whines into the camera, “Can you back me up on this?”  
The video smash-cuts to Grace holding up a white sign with #NOTAJOKE scrawled across it.  
“So yeah,” Hannah continues, “Hartbig is real, guys. Hey, should we change our names?”  
Another smash cut: Grace’s sign now reads NO!  
Hannah grins drunkenly at the camera and the credits roll. Hannah and Grace both get Bride-to-Be credits. Mamrie is listed as Best Man and Maid of Honour goes to Cheese.  
The internet loses its collective shit.


	2. Chapter 2

Ten months out from the wedding, Hannah’s lease finally expires. Most of her stuff has been at Grace’s house for months and paying rent on an apartment she barely uses has been a pain in the ass. She and Grace load the last of her things onto the U-Haul and look at Hannah’s now ex-front door.  
“This was the first place I ever had that was just mine. I earned it, you know?” Hannah’s voice wobbles a little and Grace pretends not to notice. She wraps her arm around Hannah’s shoulders and squeezes once, briefly.  
“You really did,” She agrees.  
Hannah sniffles quietly. “Bye, house.” She lifts one hand in farewell and climbs into the truck.  
Grace gets in the other side and grabs Hannah’s keys from the dashboard. Trying not to let Hannah see, she removes the key to her own house – their house, now – that’s Hannah’s had for months. She slips it into her pocket and smiles innocently at Hannah as they drive back.  
Hannah parks the truck and Grace tosses her keys over and busies herself pretending to tie her shoelace as Hannah goes to the door. She sees Hannah search for the key and jumps out.  
“Babe, where’s my key?” Hannah asks, sounding tired.  
Grace smiles. “I thought we should do this right,” she answers, “since it’s official now.” She presents the key, now with a bright red ribbon tied through it in a bow.  
“Welcome home, Hannah Hart.”  
Hannah stares at the key and then at her. Her eyes well up a little. Grace knows that Hannah likes to mark big events and they hadn’t really been able to do that up to now. Hannah hadn’t officially moved in, she’d just kind of migrated over in some kind of domestic osmosis, but this is a milestone Grace can make a fuss over. Hannah reaches out to take the key and slips it into her pocket, looking at Grace with that expression that is just hers; that only she can put on Hannah’s face. Hannah’s arms go around her waist and she leans up to kiss Grace.  
“You are amazing,” Hannah whispers against her lips, “How did you know I needed that?”  
“I love you,” Grace replies. Hannah smiles and kisses her again.  
It takes until almost midnight to finish bringing the last of the stuff in from the truck. Hannah moves the truck off the road and Grace makes a pot of green tea. She’s developed a grudging tolerance for the stuff since starting to date Hannah and she’d never admit it, but it does sound appealing after a long day. Hannah comes in through the back door and takes her mug gratefully. They sit together in warm silence, broken only by the faint sound of Goose’s panting from the other room.  
“Hey Grace,” Hannah says finally.  
“Mmm?”  
“We live together.”  
Grace smiles. “We do.”  
“We’re getting married,” Hannah says, sounding faintly awed.  
“We are,” Grace confirms, rubbing her finger over Hannah’s engagement ring. She’s never been more proud of anything she’s done than that ring.  
“I didn’t know a person could be so happy,” Hannah says in a near whisper.  
Grace knows the feeling. She takes Hannah’s mug, puts it on the coffee table with hers and answers in the only way she can. She kisses Hannah, softly at first but it doesn’t take long before they’re making out. Hannah leans back, pulling Grace on top of her. Grace feels Hannah’s thigh press up between her legs and hums in pleasure. In response she slides a hand under Hannah’s V-neck and runs it over her stomach and ribs, vaguely registering that Hannah isn’t wearing a bra. Fingers slide into her hair as Grace’s hand wanders further, tracing the soft curve of Hannah’s breast. She leans down and presses tiny, teasing kisses to Hannah neck.  
“Bedroom?” Hannah asks in her ear.  
“No,” Grace replies. “I want you here. Now.”  
Grace can actually see Hannah’s pupils dilate in response. She sits up and tugs Hannah’s shirt off, leaving her lying on the couch, hair messed up, eyes dark and lips swollen from kissing. She looks dishevelled and vulnerable and downright wanton and Grace suspects the smile she’s wearing is predatory, to say the least. She unbuttons Hannah’s jeans and unzips the fly, but when Hannah lifts her hips she shakes her head mischievously and leans down to kiss her again. She bites down on Hannah’s bottom lip and then kisses her way down her throat to nibble gently at Hannah’s collarbone.  
“Please, Grace,” Hannah murmurs and Grace doesn’t think she’s even aware of it. Grace kisses Hannah’s tattoo once, for luck, before brushing her lips gently against Hannah’s nipple.  
“Fuck,” Hannah whispers.  
Grace loves doing this, loves the effect she has. Hannah’s fingers comb through her hair as Grace switches sides. She slides one hand into Hannah’s open jeans and rests it on top of Hannah’s boyshorts. Hannah’s hips jerk in response and she breathes heavily, but Grace just lets her hand lie, not moving, and focuses her attention on Hannah’s breasts. She feels Hannah’s hips start to roll rhythmically in an unconscious attempt to get friction where she needs it most but Grace lifts her hand slightly, removing what pressure there was.  
“Grace,” Hannah whines, “don’t tease!”  
Grace shifts upward and kisses Hannah deeply.  
“Why not?” She asks when they part, “I like it when you beg me.”  
Hannah grins slightly, then pouts resolvedly.  
“I’m not going to beg, Helbig. Do your worst.”  
Grace grins back at her and leans down to whisper in her ear.  
“You’ll beg, Hannah, and when you do I’m going to make you come so hard you’ll forget your own name.”  
Grace feels Hannah’s response to that soak through her underwear. She smiles in predatory triumph and gently bites down on Hannah’s neck before kissing her way back down to her breasts.  
Hannah is breathing deeply and raggedly and Grace suspects she’s biting her lip. She twitches her fingers slightly and Hannah breathes in sharply but otherwise doesn’t respond. Grace feels her competitive instincts kick in.  
“God, Hannah, you’re so wet,” she says, “I can feel it already.”  
Hannah whimpers slightly.  
“All you have to do is ask, baby,” Grace reminds her, “I want to be inside you so badly. Just ask me.”  
“N-nope,” Hannah manages, as though she hasn’t spread her legs as far as she can in tight jeans.  
Grace nibbles gently at the outer curve of Hannah’s breast before sucking roughly, leaving her mark. Hannah’s hips jerk up again and this time Grace exerts the tiniest bit of pressure. She feels the faint bite of fingernails on her shoulders and wraps her lips around Hannah’s nipple.  
“Shit, Grace!” Hannah hisses. Her hips lift off the couch again and Grace somehow manages to get her jeans down around her thighs one-handed. She puts her hand back between Hannah’s legs and starts stroking the outside of her soaked underwear, maddeningly slowly. Hannah’s hips roll in time with her movements and she’s moaning softly.  
“I want you so much, Hannah,” Grace says, putting just a tiny bit more pressure into her movements. “I want to feel you come around my fingers, I want feel your clit throbbing against my tongue.” She presses firmly against Hannah’s clit, once, and retreats. Grace can hear the denim around Hannah’s thighs creak as she tries to spread her legs further.  
“Beg me, Hannah,” she instructs, putting a tone of command into her voice.  
“Please!” Hannah all but shouts.  
“Please what?” Grace teases.  
“Fuck, Grace, let me come, please!”  
Grace grins in triumph and slips her hand under Hannah’s shorts to where she most wants to be. Hannah moans as Grace enters her and Grace somehow balances long enough to push Hannah’s jeans and underwear down to her knees with her other hand. Hannah kicks them off and now she’s naked under Grace, looking up at her with wide blue eyes, pleading silently. Grace kisses her and curls her fingers and Hannah moans into the kiss. Grace thrusts into Hannah once, twice, again and then withdraws. Hannah whimpers in protest, but they’ve danced this dance enough times for her to know what’s coming. She shifts up to give Grace room and Grace traces a path down Hannah’s body with her lips until she’s settled between Hannah’s legs. She looks up at her fiancée and grins again.  
“One more time, beautiful?”  
“Please,” Hannah breathes and when Grace presses the first gentle kiss on Hannah’s clit her head rocks back into the couch so fast she sees stars.  
Grace loves this. Hannah completely comes apart under her touch, moaning and swearing and mumbling half-formed instructions. She slides two fingers back inside Hannah and sets a slow, steady rhythm that never quite reaches the tempo Hannah needs. She can feel Hannah’s heartbeat around her fingers and against her tongue and between that and her unconscious muttering Grace can perfectly gauge when her arousal is on the verge of becoming frustration. She waits for her moment and then pauses briefly. When Hannah whines in protest Grace thrusts into her deeply, drawing a gasp that’s half shock and half pleasure. She fucks Hannah hard and fast, ignoring the Hannah’s occasional protests that she’s going to come if Grace doesn’t slow down, and feels hands slide into her hair again as Hannah rocks against her face. She can feel the first fluttering of Hannah’s orgasm and presses her tongue hard against Hannah’s clit as her moans get louder. She feels Hannah shaking as she comes, feels each wave of pleasure roll through her and holds her breath as Hannah’s hips shoot forward, cutting off her air.  
Hannah slumps back against the sofa, panting. Grace moves up to join her and presses a gentle kiss to Hannah’s lips. A single bead of sweat rolls down Hannah’s temple as she licks her lips automatically, tasting herself. Grace snuggles into Hannah’s arms, feeling slightly smug.  
“Told you so,” she whispers.  
-  
They wake up curled together on the sofa, holding hands. Hannah wanders into the bathroom, still naked and Grace hears the shower start. She starts making coffee when Hannah’s voice rings out.  
“Grace, is this a hickey?!”  
Grace snorts.  
“Get your ass in here, missy!” Hannah’s tone sends Grace into full blown giggles and she goes to the bathroom where Hannah is inspecting the small mark Grace left. Hannah tries to look stern, but the effect is somewhat ruined by the fact that she’s naked.  
“”I’m sorry babe,” Grace says insincerely, “how can I make it up to you?”  
Hannah points at her.  
“Get your clothes off and get in that shower, lady.”  
Grace laughs happily as she obeys.


	3. Chapter 3

They try and keep their videos separate most of the time, despite living together. Grace’s teasing sometimes makes the final edit of My Drunk Kitchen and Hannah occasionally wanders into frame behind her when she does her own videos, but otherwise not much changes in terms of their online presence. Three months before the wedding Grace posts a video where Hannah can just be seen wrestling with Goose outside and it gets almost triple her usual number of views.  
“Holy shit, dude,” Hannah comments, “I didn’t even realise I was in frame!”  
Grace laughs.  
“You know, people have been begging us to do more videos together since we announced the wedding. If this is the kind of response we get, we could probably pay for the honeymoon from one video alone!”  
They both laugh, but somehow after three days, she finds herself standing just off-camera as Hannah does her intro.  
“Hey guys, this week I have a very special guest, who’s possibly even worse at cooking than I am!”  
Grace clamps down on the urge to smile and strides into frame.  
“How dare you?”  
“Sorry babe,” Hannah grins, “It’s true!”  
Grace turns and looks at the camera, lips turned down.  
“I want a divorce.”  
Hannah snorts. “We’re not married yet!”  
Grace frowns harder.  
“Then I want a prenup.”  
And they’re off.  
They film for almost two hours and by the end they’ve pretty much forgotten about the camera. Grace is covered in flour from an impromptu food-fight and Hannah has chocolate smeared on her neck and shirt and a white, floury handprint on her ass. She pulls what was supposed to be chocolate chip cookies from the oven and puts them on the counter. They both lean over to inspect the result. The ‘cookies’ are basically lumps of charcoal. There’s a pause, then they glance at each other and howl with laughter.  
“You are so bad at this!” Grace tells Hannah, who clutches her chest in mock scandal.  
“You’re the one who didn’t set the timer!” Hannah accuses.  
Hannah rubs her face with the back of her hand, smearing yet more chocolate across it. Grace laughs even harder.  
“You idiot,” she says fondly, “Come here.” She wipes at the chocolate with her finger and offers it to Hannah, who instinctively licks it.  
Grace is a little fuzzy on what happens after that but somehow she has Hannah pinned against the counter, breathing hard as Grace sucks the chocolate from her throat.  
“Grace, the camera,” Hannah gasps.  
“Shut up,” Grace says, and kisses her.  
Later, even Grace has to admit the video is adorable. She hadn’t realised until she saw it on screen how often she reaches out to touch Hannah, or kisses her on the head in passing, or just how goofy she looks when Hannah does something cute. She’s in love, and it shows. They weren’t wrong about the interest either; the video hits half a million views within a week. There are exploding ovaries all over Tumblr and Grace wonders if Hannah had left their makeout session in the video whether they might have actually killed someone.  
Hannah has that file saved on a thumb drive. Just in case.  
-  
It’s three weeks until the wedding and Grace is a little surprised that neither of them have freaked out yet. Mamrie and Grace’s mom basically hijacked the whole thing so that the two of them usually just had to pick from a shortlist of five or six venues or caterers or whatever and now everything is booked and ordered and ready and Grace had expected to be having a nervous breakdown at this point. Instead, she’s mostly impatient. She can’t wait to be married to Hannah. What she is nervous about, though, is the bachelorette party tonight. Hannah insists on referring to it as a ‘stag night’, and Grace had tuned out halfway through the explanation why. Something about deer and British chickens?  
Mamrie and Tyler had planned the whole thing and promised it would outdo even Mamrie’s birthday weekend. Grace and Hannah were forbidden from asking questions so when the limo draws up to take them to the party, they’re holding hands out of nervousness more than affection.  
“How bad can it be?” Hannah asks, laughing nervously.  
Grace looks at her. “Crossbows, Hannah.”  
Hannah’s eyes widen comically.  
“If we don’t survive this,” she says with exaggerated sincerity, “just know that I love you.”  
-  
What happens at the party, stays at the party. They agree never to speak of it again, especially the part in the ball pool. Grace just hopes she stops limping in time for the wedding.  
-  
The last three weeks seem to somehow both drag on forever and go by in an instant, but eventually, Grace is standing in a hotel room in a gorgeous white dress as her mom fusses around her and tries not to cry. Mamrie is with Hannah and her sisters and Grace’s brothers are downstairs doing their groomsman thing. Grace feels like she’s at the eye of a huge storm and she really wants to just find Hannah and hold on to her for a while. Her phone beeps and Hannah’s name pops up on the screen.  
You ready?  
She smiles.  
Race you to the altar  
The response comes back straight away.  
We’re in a hotel, Grace. There is no altar.  
Bite me  
That’s what the honeymoon is for.  
And just like that, it’s time.  
She walks down the aisle and all she can see is Hannah. She reaches the end and Hannah takes her hands and holds tight, beaming at her. She vaguely registers the music fade away and the guests take their seats but Hannah is filling up the whole world and Grace doesn’t even hear the opening of the ceremony. Hannah is biting her lip in an effort not to cry and Grace has a lump in her throat the size of a baseball. They just stare at each other, letting the ceremony wash over them and drinking each other in until finally they deliver the wedding vows. Hannah goes first and has to clear her throat three times before she can speak. Grace somehow manages not to cry as she recites the words. Up until this moment she’d always found them a little trite, cliché even, but she’s never felt more sincere than she does right now.  
“And now,” the priest says once she finishes, “Hannah and Grace have decided to add to the traditional wedding vows with their own promises.” He nods to Hannah.  
“Grace,” Hannah says, voice shaking, “I promise to always be honest with you. I promise to respect you. I promise to tell you how much I love you every day and twice on Sundays. I promise to keep fake ice cream in the house at all times,” Grace lets out a choked laugh at that, “and I promise to stand beside you, no matter what, forever.”  
Tears stream down Grace’s cheeks and she shakes her head helplessly. There’s no way she’s going to manage the speech she has prepared without breaking down, so she goes for the essentials.  
“Everything,” she promises, “always.”  
And then her wife is kissing her and the crowd goes wild.


	4. Chapter 4

The honeymoon is amazing. They spend a week on the beach and Grace refuses to let Hannah wear anything any bigger than her bikini the whole time. They drink cocktails and order room service and make love and on the last night before they go back to Los Angeles they sit on the balcony of their hotel room wrapped together in a quilt and watch the sun come up over the sea.  
“See that, Grace?” Hannah says sleepily, gesturing to the sunrise. Grace knows they’ll probably regret staying awake all night by the time they hit LAX but right now she’s too happy to care.  
“I see it,” she says.  
“Every day that happens is a day I will love you.”  
Grace smiles.  
“That was…the cheesiest thing you’ve said all week!” She laughs and Hannah shoves her playfully.  
“Oh, screw you, Grace, that was some quality romance!”  
Grace laughs helplessly.  
“You do better then!” Hannah challenges.  
Grace smirks at her, before staring into her eyes with mock sincerity.  
“Hannah Hart,” she intones as a dopey smile spreads over Hannah’s face, “I love you so much, I let you keep that fucking disgusting stinky cheese in the house.”  
Hannah holds out for a few seconds before they both crack up.  
“Okay, you win,” Hannah concedes.  
-  
Mamrie meets them at the airport and hugs them so hard Grace swears her ribs creak.  
“Jesus, Mames, it’s only been a week!” Grace says.  
“I missed you guys!” Mamrie mumbles into her shoulder.  
The three of them drive over to the house and Hannah starts unloading laundry as Grace says hello to Goose.  
“Hey Grace, when do you start vlogging again?” Mamrie asks.  
“Day after tomorrow, why?”  
“Are you guys free to shoot a YDAD tomorrow then?”  
“Sure Mames,” Grace replies and Hannah nods.  
“Great,” Mamrie says. “I’ll be here around two. Make sure you have clothes on!”  
They say their goodbyes and Hannah and Grace are left alone. Hannah comes to sit by her, smiling as Goose flops over her foot and presents her tummy for rubbing. Hannah smiles and leans down to oblige for a moment, before leaning back into Grace’s arms.  
“Hey wifey,” Grace murmurs, “we’re home.”  
“We are,” Hannah agrees. “Married and everything.”  
“Should we take up crochet now or after the hip replacements?”  
“Actually, I prefer bridge to crochet.”  
-  
After that life pretty much goes back to normal. Six months after the wedding, Grace is still trolling the hartbig tag and Hannah still posts ambiguous Instagram pictures of the two of them and anyone new to their work usually doesn’t even realise they’re married until older fans point it out. Being married makes her feel grounded somehow, like her life has a solid foundation now.  
They’re having breakfast together one morning when Hannah decides to blow that out of the water.  
“Hey Grace?” She asks, sounding a little nervous.  
“Yeah?”  
“Do you, um…do you want to start thinking about kids?”  
Grace freezes and looks at Hannah, who looks back at her with hopeful, trusting eyes.  
“Just so I’m clear about this conversation from the start,” Grace says slowly, “You’re talking about us having kids? Being parents?”  
“Yeah,” Hannah confirms.  
“Okay. Give me a second here.”  
Hannah falls silent. Grace can see her trying not to fidget.  
“We’ve been married less than a year,” Grace says, keeping her tone neutral.  
“I know, I’m not saying now, I just think if we start talking about it now then when we’re both ready we’ll have a head start.  
When we’re both ready. “Are you ready now, Hannah?”  
Her eyes drop and that’s all the answer Grace needs.  
“You want kids,” Grace says slowly, “and you’re ready to have them.”  
“Um, yeah. So I thought we should talk about it.”  
Grace doesn’t want to talk about it. She doesn’t want Hannah to know about the panic rising inside her at the thought, making her nauseous and a little dizzy. She doesn’t want to say that her gut response is a very emphatic ‘no’. She doesn’t want to see the joy fade out of Hannah’s eyes, not yet, so she takes a deep breath.  
“Okay, let’s talk about it.”  
Hannah smiles brightly.  
“Okay, so obviously, I want kids at some point. What are your thoughts?” She asks.  
Grace heart is pounding. She knows this is a conversation that requires nothing less than honesty but she also knows Hannah’s not going to like her answer. She stalls.  
“Right now my thoughts are mostly panic, Hannah. You kind of sprung this on me.”  
Hannah smiles sheepishly and reaches out to take Grace’s hand.  
“I know. Don’t worry babe, I don’t expect us to work everything out today. I just wanted to float the idea, that’s all.”  
Grace feels the anxiety recede a little at that. Hannah’s hand is warm in hers and she focuses on that, trying to anchor herself.  
“Okay, so. Wow. You want to have kids with me. Okay.”  
Hannah laughs a little.  
“Grace, take a breath. Use your words.”  
“I don’t want to be pregnant,” Grace blurts. Hannah absorbs that for a second and then smiles at her.  
“That works out then. I kind of do.”  
Grace takes another deep breath. She’s half annoyed that Hannah is finding her panic cute but at the same time grateful that Hannah understands her well enough to give her space to flip her shit.  
“Hannah, do you really think I’m cut out to be somebody’s mom?”  
Hannah’s eyes change then, as she looks at Grace. Her face fills with such love and joy that Grace can barely look at her.  
“Grace, I think you’ll be an amazing mom.” Hannah says reverently and Grace can hear the steady faith in her voice. She wonders what Hannah would do if she just yelled “AFRICA!” and bolted out of the house, and realises that maybe she’s becoming hysterical. She gestures pointlessly, trying to release some of the nervous tension inside her.  
“I think I’m freaking out too much for this conversation right now, Hannah,” she says finally, “can we talk about it later? Maybe with hard liquor?”  
Hannah laughs easily. “Sure, babe. Take all the time you need.”  
She leans over and kisses Grace on the cheek and then goes back to her breakfast like she hasn’t just turned Grace’s entire world upside down.


	5. Chapter 5

They sit down together that evening to talk and Grace really wants to get drunk. Instead she contents herself with a single glass of wine and fidgets with her wedding ring. She’s trying not to let Hannah see the effect this whole thing is having on her, but Hannah knows her too well for that. She kneels on the floor in front of Grace and takes her hands, stilling them.  
“Grace, relax.”  
“I’m not ready to have kids, Hannah!”  
Grace didn’t mean to say that this soon and she definitely didn’t mean to yell it. She decides to blame the wine.  
“That’s okay,” Hannah soothes. Grace really doesn’t understand how she can be so calm about this.  
“It’s okay to be scared,” Hannah says.  
“You’re not scared,” Grace grumbles as Hannah rubs her arms slowly.  
“Of course I’m scared, but both of us freaking out doesn’t help anyone.”  
Grace looks at her in surprise.  
“Babe, I feel like an irresponsible kid most days. It still blows my mind that we’re married; that I’m an adult with a wife and a house and a dog. The idea of being a mom is crazy to me, you know? But you and me, we’re solid. We’re forever. We can do this, Grace. And when you’re ready, it would be my absolute privilege to have a baby with you.”  
“What if I’m never ready?” Shit. The wine was definitely not a good idea. Hannah pauses for a moment as though unsure of her meaning, so she clarifies.  
“What if I never want kids, Hannah?”  
Devastation flashes across Hannah’s face for a split second. It’s fast, but it’s real and Grace feels like she was just kicked in the chest, hard. Hannah keeps the same reassuring tone as she replies.  
“Then we’ll get a lot of dogs,” she jokes. Grace laughs weakly, wondering if she’ll ever be able to stop seeing that look on Hannah’s face.  
Hannah leans forward and kisses her and Grace kisses back urgently. She wonders, if she keeps kissing Hannah long enough, whether she’ll stop feeling like she’s betrayed the most important thing in her life.  
Hannah pulls away from her.  
“Okay babe, you know where I stand. If you start feeling like you’re ready or like you want to talk about it some more, let me know, okay?”  
“Okay,” Grace promises, feeling guilty and relieved all at once.  
-  
She thought that would be the end of it. She thought their lives would go back to normal and it wouldn’t come up again unless something changed.  
She thought wrong.  
Hannah isn’t just ready to have kids, she wants to have kids. Ever since they talked she’s noticed the longing on Hannah’s face whenever they walk past baby clothes in a store or moms pushing strollers in the park. She’s seen Hannah whittling again, something she only ever did to relieve frustration. She tries not to think about it for fear the guilt will overwhelm her, until the day she wakes up early and overhears Hannah on the phone to her sister.  
Hannah is making breakfast with her back to the bedroom door and the phone is on speaker, propped against the microwave. Grace is about to call out a good morning when she hears Naomi’s voice.  
“Have you talked about it?” Naomi says.  
“Yeah, she’s not ready.” Hannah replies and there’s bitterness in her tone. Grace freezes.  
“And let me guess, instead of telling her how you really feel, you pretended it was no big deal and backed off?”  
“She’s not ready, Naomi! I’m not going to push her!”  
“She’s not ready or she just doesn’t want children?”  
Hannah freezes for a moment.  
“I was at the wedding, Hannah, and I’m pretty sure you promised your wife you’d always be honest with her. You guys need to talk about this properly.”  
Hannah’s shoulders slump. Grace pushes the bedroom door further closed, just in case she turns round, and peers through the crack that’s left.  
Hannah runs her hand through her hair.  
“I know,” she says, sounding defeated, “but what if you’re right? What if she never wants to be a mom with me?”  
There’s a long silence.  
“Then you have to decide which you want more, Hannah,” Naomi says finally, “Grace or children.”  
Grace has heard enough. She retreats silently to the bed and then stomps back to the door and wanders out, feigning sleepiness. Hannah’s phone is nowhere to be seen and she smiles brightly at Grace, holding out a mug of coffee.  
“Good morning, beautiful,” Hannah says, smiling. She doesn’t mention the call.  
-  
Grace knows Hannah will pick her. She doesn’t doubt that for a second. Hannah’s love for her is probably the only thing in the world she has absolute faith in, so that isn’t the problem.  
The problem is that being with Grace means Hannah can’t have something she badly wants and now Grace feels like writhing in the fucking dirt from sheer guilt.  
The enormity of it is paralysing and for three weeks after the phone call she wrestles with her conscience, but eventually it boils down to a simple choice.  
Have kids and Grace’s whole world will change into something she doesn’t particularly want, or don’t have kids and Hannah will be heartbroken, forever.  
It gets real simple after that.  
-  
Grace makes them pancakes for breakfast. Hannah reads the paper as she eats and Grace’s mind supplies her with an image of a brunette toddler, sitting on Hannah’s knee, stealing bites from her plate. Her heart thunders in her chest at the thought, but she’s made her choice and she’s sticking with it. She takes a deep breath.  
“Hey Hannah?”  
“Mmmm?”  
“I’m ready.”  
“For what?” Hannah asks absently.  
“For a baby.”  
Hannah head shoots up and she stares at Grace, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Her face lights up into a heart-melting smile and Grace fixes the sight of it in her memory. This is why she’s doing this. This is what matters.  
“Are you sure?” Hannah asks, and Grace smiles at her, hoping her uncertainty doesn’t show.  
“I am,” she says steadily.  
Hannah jumps out of her chair and showers Grace with kisses. Grace kisses her back, trying to lose herself in the moment, trying to quiet the lingering unease she feels.  
“I love you,” Hannah says as she pulls her toward the bedroom, “I love you so fucking much.”  
-  
They lie together afterwards and when Hannah rolls over and kisses her bare shoulder Grace shoves her misgivings and her fears into the back of her mind and resolves to embrace the decision she’s made. She’s always known she’d do anything for Hannah; now it’s time to put her money where her mouth is and actually participate in this.  
“So how do we do this?” Grace asks. “A sperm bank or what?”  
“Um, actually,” Hannah says hesitantly, “Tim already kind of volunteered.”  
“What?!” Grace yells, instinctively covering herself at the mention of her brother.  
“Yeah,” Hannah says, blushing, “he pulled me aside at the wedding reception and offered his, uh, services.”  
“That’s…Hannah, that’s fucking weird.”  
“Yeah, that’s what he said, too. It was the most awkward conversation I’ve ever had in my life.”  
“You want to have a baby with my brother?” Grace asks incredulously, already wondering if it’s too late to back out. Hannah wrinkles her nose.  
“No, Grace, I want to have a baby with you. Can you imagine how cute a kid with Hartbig genes will be? But unless you’re packing something I haven’t seen yet, the only way to get the Helbig half of this particular recipe is to let your brother help out.”  
“Hannah, there’s no way… I’m not going to… even be in the same room as Tim’s – eurgh!”  
“Babe, will you relax?”  
Grace eyes her. “You’re doing it again, aren’t you? Being all calm so I can freak out?”  
Hannah bites her lip. “Maybe a little.”  
“Hannah, this time I really need you to freak out with me!”  
Hannah sags in relief and her whole body shudders.  
“Thank God. It’s so weird, Grace! I don’t want to think about your brother’s boy-juice!”  
They look at each other for a moment before Hannah buries her face in the pillow and Grace finally laughs, a little hysterically.  
“Let’s not do that, then,” she says. Hannah turns to look at her.  
“The thing is though,” Hannah says hesitantly, “it… okay, it’s weird as hell to think about and at first I was like ‘just, no!’, but if we did it this way, our kid could maybe, I dunno, have your eyes, Grace. How amazing would that be?”  
Grace feels like her brain is shutting down.  
“It would have Tim’s eyes, Hannah,” she points out needlessly.  
“No, listen. No matter whose junk we use, this is our baby, Grace. And if it has Helbig genes, it’ll look like you as well as me. I dunno, I just think maybe, you know, a little weird grossness at the beginning might be worth it. It’s going to be weird and gross for me no matter what, maybe this will be better.”  
And so later that week Grace finds herself having possibly the strangest conversation of her life with her brother and Hannah. Grace and Tim don’t look at each other, instead speaking only to Hannah, and Grace makes it clear that in no way, shape or form will she be present during the whole insemination thing. Hannah agrees, looking a little like she wishes she didn’t have to be there either, and Grace has to suppress a momentary hope that Hannah will rethink the whole baby idea.  
They find a doctor and Hannah starts taking prenatal supplements and before she knows what’s happening, she’s dropping Hannah off at the clinic and waving awkwardly at Tim before driving the hell away and trying not to think about what’s happening inside. She sits in a coffee shop nearby and tries not to hyperventilate. It’s all suddenly very real, and Grace really wants to call Mamrie and tell her everything, but she can’t. Firstly because she and Hannah agreed not to tell anyone about the baby until there was a baby to announce, and secondly because she doesn’t think she could stop herself telling Mamrie just how conflicted she feels about this whole thing. Hannah is getting pregnant less than half a mile away from where she’s sitting right now and the wall of denial she’s built so far is crumbling under the enormity of that one idea and now she can’t hold back the thought she’s been fighting ever since she made her choice.  
I don’t want to do this.


	6. Chapter 6

The pregnancy test sits in the bathroom cabinet for two weeks after the visit to the clinic. The day finally comes and Grace stands outside while Hannah takes the longest fucking pee in the history of time and space. Finally she hears the flush and Hannah comes out of the bathroom, holding the test and looking more terrified than Grace has ever seen. Her own fears and doubts immediately get shoved aside as she wraps her arms around her wife and the two of them stand together in the bathroom doorway, clinging to one another.  
“It’s okay,” Grace soothes, “no matter what it says, we’ll be okay.”  
They stay like that, just breathing together, until Hannah’s phone chimes the end of the countdown. Grace lets her go and they look at each other for a long moment before Hannah takes a deep breath and looks at the test.  
Her face falls and she shows Grace the result. Negative.  
Grace goes weak with relief for a split second before her conscience catches up to her. Hannah looks absolutely devastated and the guilt that Grace has been fending off hits her square in the chest. She kisses Hannah deeply.  
“It’s okay, baby,” she says as they part. “We knew this might happen.”  
“I know,” Hannah says, voice thick with tears.  
Her guilt prods her.  
“So we just try again, okay?” She says, hoping Hannah assumes the wobble in her voice is sadness at the result.  
“Okay.” Tears are starting to track down Hannah’s cheeks and Grace wipes them away tenderly before she kisses her again, trying to provide some measure of comfort. She spends the rest of the day holding Hannah, feeling like the worst person in the world.  
Making the decision to do this for Hannah was simple. Trying not to regret it is turning out to be far more complicated.  
-  
They visit the clinic three more times over the next few months and still nothing. On the fifth attempt, Hannah comes out of the bathroom, hands Grace the test and walks away, a look of resigned defeat on her face. Some awful, selfish part of Grace wonders if it will never happen, if nature is going to solve this whole situation for her, and she digs her nails hard into her palm in an effort to banish that thought.  
Hannah slumps on the couch and stares at the wall as the seconds tick away. Grace knows her well enough to see the hurt behind her blank expression and for the first time Grace genuinely hopes the test is positive, if only to put a smile back on Hannah’s face.  
The phone goes off and Hannah doesn’t react. She just keeps staring straight ahead. Grace dismisses the alarm, takes a deep breath and looks at the test.  
A roaring sound fills her ears and her vision kaleidoscopes down until the tiny screen fills her sight.  
“Hannah,” she says thickly, and her face must be doing something crazy because Hannah jumps up, concerned. She holds out the test wordlessly, feeling dizzy. Hannah stares at it for a long moment before taking it from her and reading the result.  
She looks back up. The only other time Grace has seen her look so completely dumbfounded was when Grace kissed her for the first time and she smiles in reflex at the memory.  
“I’m pregnant?” Hannah whispers.  
“You’re pregnant,” Grace confirms. She expects yelling and jumping and crying, but instead Hannah just keeps on staring at her, looking completely astonished. Grace is swaying slightly and the edges of her vision are fading to grey, so she leads them both over to the couch before they fall over.  
She doesn’t know how long they sit there, holding hands, staring vacantly. Finally, Hannah starts as though waking from a dream.  
“Grace, we can’t tell anyone.”  
“Okay,” Grace responds. Her mind is still totally blank.  
“I’m serious. Not Tim, not Mamrie, not your mom, nobody. Not yet.”  
“Whatever you want, Hannah,” she says distantly.  
Hannah’s hand is hovering over her stomach as though she’s afraid to touch it.  
“Grace, we’re going to be parents!”  
That’s when everything goes black.  
-  
She’s pretty sure Hannah is never going to let her live this down. She can’t believe she actually passed out. Hannah laughs harder than Grace thinks is appropriate and Grace grumbles under her breath in response.  
“Why aren’t we telling anyone?” Grace asks in an effort to change the subject and Hannah sobers a little, but the sparkle stays in her eyes.  
“The books say the first trimester is the riskiest. I just want to make sure I’m going to stay pregnant before we tell people.”  
“Isn’t it going to be a little obvious when you stop getting drunk online every week?”  
Hannah waves a dismissive hand.  
“I can fake that, babe. They’ll understand once we announce it.” Grace wants to argue with that but honestly, she’s probably right.  
Over the next few weeks Grace starts to realise the enormity of what’s happening. At first nothing really changes. Hannah doesn’t get sick, which Grace is grateful for, because she thinks seeing Hannah suffer would make her outright resent the whole thing. As the weeks start to pass though, Hannah collects more books on pregnancy and makes Grace read them with her like they’re cramming for finals. At first Hannah wants her to give up alcohol and caffeine too until Grace points out that while people might believe Hannah is on some kind of detox, nobody would believe for a second that Grace had given up coffee voluntarily.  
Eventually the date of the first ultrasound rolls around and they climb into the car.  
“Hey there kiddo,” Hannah says to her belly, “we get to meet you today. You excited?”  
She looks up at Grace, smiling happily and Grace manages to smile back.  
Grace hates the clinic. She knows it’s probably some kind of transference but she loathes every inch of it. Hannah’s hand is warm in hers as she lies on the bed and soon the doctor is spreading the jelly over Hannah’s stomach and pointing out a tiny grey dot in a sea of grey static.  
“That’s our baby?” Hannah asks, sounding completely awed.  
“That’s your baby,” the doctor confirms. “Everything looks normal from what I can see. Do you want a picture?”  
“Yeah!” Hannah says happily and the doctor leaves to get the printout.  
Grace smiles and looks at the screen, trying to feel some kind of connection, to feel some of the joy that is pouring out of Hannah like sunlight. She looks from the blurry image to Hannah’s stomach and tries to imagine the tiny human growing inside it but all she can think, all she’s been able to think for months, is that this is not the life she wanted.  
She loves Hannah, though, and so long as she keeps focusing on that she can get through this, so she leans over and kisses her. The doctor returns and hands Grace the photo and she smiles, aware that Hannah is watching.  
-  
By chance, the three month mark of the pregnancy falls at roughly the same time as their first wedding anniversary, so getting everyone together is easy. They throw a huge party and invite everybody they can think of. The party has been going for over an hour before the last of the guests turn up and once everyone has arrived they stand together and get everyone’s attention.  
“Tyler, shut that off, will you?” Hannah yells, gesturing to the stereo. He obliges and Hannah smiles. She raises a champagne glass filled with water and toasts Grace.  
“To my beautiful wife,” she says, “this has been the best year of my life. Here’s to a hundred more.”  
“Hannah, you can’t toast with water, it’s bad luck!” Mamrie yells and Hannah shares a private smile with Grace before taking the opening.  
“It would be worse luck if I didn’t, Mames. Guys, this isn’t just an anniversary party. Grace and I have news.”  
Hannah’s hand unconsciously goes to her stomach and Grace sees Mamrie’s jaw drop.  
“No FUCKING way!”  
Hannah laughs and nods.  
“Guys, I’m three months pregnant.”  
The room explodes. Grace keeps a smile on her face as she’s pounced on by what feels like the whole room. People are hugging and laughing and congratulating her left and right and she doesn’t understand why she can’t feel the way everybody else seems to about this whole thing. She smiles and laughs and tries to ignore the hollow feeling in her chest.  
“You little fucker!” Mamrie bellows, pulling them both into a bear hug. “Why am I just hearing this now?”  
“We didn’t tell anyone,” Hannah reassures her, “We were waiting to make sure the first trimester went okay.”  
Mamrie shakes her head but accepts their reasoning. “Do you have a picture?”  
Hannah pulls the sonogram from her wallet and soon it’s being passed around the room.  
“Wait, Hannah, you’ve been doing My Drunk Kitchen this whole time,” Pearl says and Grace sees heads turn.  
“Grape juice!” Hannah laughs. “Check the videos, I made sure the carton was always visible. We didn’t want to give anything away too soon.”  
Pearl laughs. “I’m surprised your Hartosexuals didn’t pick up on that.”  
“I’m announcing it in tomorrow’s video, so they will soon!”  
The party gets back on track after that and it’s almost three am before they wave goodbye to the last guest. Hannah closes the door and leans on it, surveying the damage.  
“This place is wrecked!” She exclaims.  
“Yeah. I booked a cleaning service for tomorrow morning so we don’t have to deal with it,” Grace says as she steers Hannah into the bedroom. As Hannah strips Grace watches her, wondering when the soft plane of her stomach will start to swell. Hannah catches her staring and smiles.  
“What are you hoping for? Girl or boy?” She asks.  
Grace shrugs. “I don’t care,” she says.  
“As long as it’s healthy, right?” Hannah smiles sleepily.  
“Yeah,” Grace agrees, too tired to feign much enthusiasm. They climb into bed and Grace curls around Hannah, pressing a loving kiss to the back of her neck. Hannah reaches back, takes Grace’s hand and guides it to her belly. She hums contentedly as Grace’s hand covers Hannah’s womb and tangles their fingers together.  
“Goodnight, Grace,” she mumbles, already half asleep.  
“Night, beautiful,” Grace says and waits until she’s sure Hannah has drifted off before moving her hand away.


	7. Chapter 7

After the party they’re showered with gifts and congratulations and Grace’s heart sinks a little further every time she looks at the baby stuff that is slowly taking over their home. The final straw comes when Hannah finally starts showing and Grace can hardly look her in the eye, never mind acknowledge the growing curve of her belly. She knows she can’t keep going like this anymore, so she does the only thing she can think of.  
“Hey babe?”  
“Yeah?” Hannah says.  
“I just wanted to give you a heads-up, I’m going to therapy tomorrow.”  
Hannah’s gaze focuses in on her.  
“Are you okay?”  
“Yeah,” Grace says, trying to sound casual, “I just want to make sure I don’t freak out at the whole ‘being a mom’ thing. I’m following your example, Little Miss Self Help!”  
Hannah scrutinises her closely for a minute and smiles.  
“I am all about being mentally balanced!” She agrees cheerfully before sobering slightly. “You know you can talk to me, too, right?” she asks, and Grace hears the slight hurt in her voice.  
Grace hugs her, all too aware of the slight bump between them.  
“I know, beautiful, but you’re the pregnant one. My job is to pamper you and fulfil your every whim, not get all weird and awkward at you.”  
Hannah grins. “I am enjoying the pampering,” she admits.  
-  
Grace isn’t sure she’s actually going to go through with this. She thinks about cancelling the whole morning and it’s a genuine surprise when she finds herself shaking hands with the therapist, whose name is Mark, and sitting down. She talks in a low monotone and refuses to make eye contact. She talks about their history together and their wedding and when she can’t avoid it any more, she talks about the baby. She’s never said the words out loud before and somehow she feels like she’s betraying Hannah by acknowledging these feelings.  
“I couldn’t bear the thought of Hannah being unhappy because of me, so I said yes and now she’s pregnant and I just feel like my entire life is falling apart around me, and I can’t talk to Hannah about it because what would I say? ‘Hey Hannah, this whole baby thing is a fucking nightmare and I wish I’d never said yes!’ I just…I feel so trapped.”  
“You could leave,” Mark observes neutrally and Grace’s heads shoots up as she pins him in a death glare. She takes a breath before she speaks but it doesn’t abate the anger. She’s been bottling it up for so long that it feels good to finally have a target.  
“I would never do that.”  
“Why not?” Grace knows he is probably trying to provoke a response from her but she can’t stop the fury that erupts.  
“Because Hannah is my wife! I love her and I am never going to leave her!”  
“Then you have to deal with this child,” he says calmly.  
“I know that!” Grace is all but yelling now.  
“So what do you want from therapy, Grace?”  
Her answer comes instantly.  
“I want to learn to love my kid!”  
There’s a moment’s silence. Grace stares at Mark in shock.  
“Did you know you were going to say that?”  
Grace shakes her head.  
“Did you mean it?”  
Grace opens and closes her mouth a couple of times before a slow smile spreads across her face.  
“I did,” she says. “I really did.”  
-  
Things change slowly, far more slowly than Grace would like. She’s trying to let go of her unease and fear around being a parent, but it’s hard work. She goes to therapy twice a week and by the time week twenty of the pregnancy rolls around, she’s making real progress.  
“Hey everyone!” Hannah says into her camera as Grace waves in the background, “we just wanted to update you real quick. We’ve gotten a lot of questions about how the baby is doing and so far, everything is great!” Hannah looks at Grace for confirmation and she nods, still smiling.  
“I just want to say thank you to everyone for being so supportive of us,” Hannah continues, “and we can’t wait to introduce this kid to all of you! I went on my tumblr and got some Qs for Grace and me to A, so first question; ‘what are you most looking forward to about being moms’?”  
Grace hopes her smile doesn’t fall noticeably. It’s true that she’s far more relaxed about the pregnancy now, but she doesn’t feel remotely like a mom. Mark says it will come with time, but she still feels like a failure every time she sees Hannah looking down at her swelling stomach with absolute awe and joy.  
“I’m looking forward being able to drink again!” Hannah jokes and then turns to her. “Grace, make sure you edit that out, okay?”  
Grace snorts at her and earns herself a slap on the thigh.  
“Seriously though, I’m looking forward to all of it. I can’t wait to meet this little dude! Or dudette, we don’t know yet,” she adds.  
“Okay, next question,” Grace says.  
“Wait, Grace, you didn’t say your thing.”  
Grace thinks for a moment and to her surprise, she actually has an answer.  
“I’m looking forward to watching you try and resist mini-Hart puppy dog eyes. This kid is going to be so spoiled!” She laughs out loud as Hannah changes the topic quickly, blushing.  
“Next question! 'Is Mamrie excited too?’ Oh my God, you guys-“  
Grace interrupts, laughing. “Mamrie has lost her god damn mind! She is baby proofing her house already!”  
Hannah nods. “She signed up for first aid training, everything! The other day we had to talk her out of putting a crib in her spare room. We don’t even have a crib yet!”  
Grace thinks it’s a mark of her progress that she doesn’t resent Mamrie for being more excited about her own kid than she is.  
“Okay, next question, is it a boy or a girl? We don’t know yet. We have a scan in two days and we find out then.”  
“Hannah thinks it’s a boy,” Grace says.  
“Yeah, I dunno, I just have this feeling.”  
“Twenty bucks?” Grace offers, and they shake on it.  
-  
Grace really thought she’d feel it when they found out, but sitting in the clinic that she doesn’t hate any more, looking at the slightly blurry image of their daughter, Grace doesn’t feel any different. Tears are tracking down Hannah’s face as she gazes at the screen but Grace feels exactly the same as she did five minutes ago.  
“A girl,” Hannah says, “we’re having a girl.”  
Grace smiles. She supposes she should at least be proud of the fact that she’s pleased by the news, but she really had believed that finding out the gender would make her feel more like this kid’s mom. She kisses Hannah’s head and squeezes her hand and tries not to let the disappointment get to her.  
“I should text Mamrie,” she murmurs, “she’ll be going crazy by now.”  
Hannah doesn’t stop looking at the sonogram the whole way home and as soon as they arrive it goes into the frame that Grace had bought specially, hoping to commemorate the moment she felt like a parent. She turns to Hannah.  
“You owe me twenty bucks, babe.”  
Hannah laughs and fishes a banknote from her wallet, handing it over easily.  
“I’ve never cared less about losing a bet!” She says.  
Grace’s disappointment builds over the week following the scan until she wonders if she’s starting to regret the whole thing again. She mentions it to Mark, who just reminds her that it might take time, but Grace is starting to worry.  
Nine days after the scan, Grace wakes up at half three in the morning and gets up to pee. She pads back into the bedroom, followed by Goose, and slides back into bed. Hannah doesn’t quite wake but she does grab Grace’s hand and move it to cover her swollen belly. Grace kisses the back of her head gently and closes her eyes, and she’s just about to drift off when she feels movement under her hand.  
Her eyes snap open. Hannah sighs softly and Grace holds her breath for almost a full minute, wondering if she imagined it. Finally Grace exhales and closes her eyes again, shaking her head. She rubs Hannah’s belly softly.  
“I thought you were saying hello, kiddo,” she murmurs into Hannah’s hair.  
She feels it again and this time she knows it’s real. The baby kicks against her hand and Hannah moans slightly but doesn’t wake up. Grace’s heart starts pounding in her chest and she manoeuvres herself down the bed slowly so as not to wake her wife. It’s selfish, she knows, but for some reason she wants this moment to herself. Eventually she’s at eye level with Hannah’s navel, both hands on Hannah’s bump.  
“Hey little one,” she says, “are you awake in there?”  
She waits for a few seconds and – yes.  
Her daughter is kicking for the first time, and just like that, Grace Helbig is somebody’s mom.  
She laughs softly, overwhelmed by the love pouring through her.  
“Hannah! Hannah, wake up!”  
Hannah opens one bleary eye and pushes her hair out of her face.  
“What are you doing?” She asks and before Grace can answer she feels the movement under her hands again. Hannah gasps.  
“She’s kicking!”  
Hannah’s eyes are wider than Grace has ever seen as she covers Grace’s hands with her own.  
“That is the weirdest sensation…”  
Grace laughs and presses a tender kiss to Hannah’s stomach.  
-  
“What about Dorothy?”  
Grace just looks at her.  
“What?” Hannah says, “that’s adorable!”  
Mamrie scoffs. “Hannah, if you name my niece Dorothy I’m filing custody papers on your ass.”  
“Okay, what about Naomi or Theresa? Or fuck, why not Mamrie?”  
“Hannah, we can’t name her after someone we know. She’ll end up with more names than Dumbledore!” Grace says, as Mamrie turns pink with pleasure and pride.  
Hannah looks at her.  
“Did you just make a Harry Potter reference?”  
“Um, yeah?” She says, browsing a baby name website idly.  
“That is so fucking hot,” Hannah’s voice drops noticeably and Mamrie clears her throat.  
“Still in the room, guys. Hannah, save the horny pregnant lady stuff for when I’m not, okay?”  
Grace laughs, but makes a note to explore this new geeky reference turn-on Hannah’s developed.  
A name catches her eye and it seems appropriate after everything she’s been through.  
“What about Amy?” She suggests. “It means ‘beloved’.”  
Hannah looks at her and for a moment it’s just the two of them in perfect sync.  
“Amy.” Hannah says, tasting the sound of it.  
“I like it,” Mamrie declares.  
Hannah nods and Grace puts the laptop aside and kneels in front of Hannah. Ever since she started kicking, Grace can’t stop talking to her daughter.  
“Hi Amy,” she says softly, feeling Hannah’s fingers comb lovingly through her hair.  
“I’m your mom.”


	8. Chapter 8

It doesn’t stop being scary. In fact, now that Grace is invested in this pregnancy it’s more overwhelming than ever. She finds herself constantly thinking about baby-proofing, about which books they’ll use to teach her to read, about college funds, and by the time Hannah is in her eighth month Grace just wants to wrap her in bubble wrap and have her carried everywhere on a sedan chair. She wakes up every morning curled protectively around her wife, with their tangled fingers resting over Amy.  
Grace is grateful that Hannah is a deep sleeper. She’s developed the habit of waking just before dawn and talking to her daughter while Hannah is still dead to the world.  
“Hey Amy,” she murmurs, stroking Hannah’s stomach as the sky slowly turns from purple to red.  
“It’s your mom again. The cool one, not the dorky one. How you doing in there?”  
She half expects Amy to kick in response and laughs a little.  
“Okay, the slightly less dorky mom. You’re getting so big, kiddo! Your mom keeps complaining that you’re making her feel like a walrus, but don’t listen. She’s beautiful and she loves you like crazy. We both do.”  
Grace glances up at the window as the first soft beams of morning light creep through.  
“Do you see that? Your mom told me something once and I can’t think of a better promise to make to you. Every day the sun rises, Amy, is a day I will love you. I promise.”  
Amy does kick, then, and Grace laughs as Hannah grunts and frowns in response.  
“If you’re half as adorable as your mom, we are in so much trouble,” she observes.  
-  
Three weeks from Hannah’s due date they start putting furniture together. Mamrie comes over and the two of them install Hannah in the easy chair to ‘supervise’ while they try and figure out the instructions.  
“Where’s the screwdriver?” Grace asks, holding two pieces together with one hand. Hannah kicks it over and Grace attempts to screw the pieces together.  
“Shit,” she says.  
“This is like trying to reading fucking hieroglyphics!” Mamrie exclaims.  
“Guys!” Hannah scolds, covering her belly protectively, “Did you not read that article I sent you? Amy can hear you swearing!”  
“Sorry babe,” Grace says distractedly. “This screwdriver is the wrong size. Where’s your toolkit?”  
“In the closet, the top shelf on the left,” Hannah replies and Grace goes to find it.  
“Hannah, it’s not here!” She yells and hears Hannah groan in response. After a moment Hannah appears in the doorway.  
“I said left, Grace,” she says sarcastically and reaches up to grab the heavy box. Grace grabs her wrist.  
“Nope! Pregnant ladies do not lift things. Go sit back down.”  
“I’m not an invalid, Grace,” Hannah grumbles.  
“No, you’re carrying precious cargo. Now sit your adorable ass down!”  
Hannah screws up her face in an effort not to smile and Grace leans down and kisses her, stroking her belly softly.  
“You two better not be making out in there!” Mamrie yells from the other room and Hannah giggles into the kiss.  
“You look beautiful today,” Grace says conversationally, “the sexiest pregnant walrus I’ve ever seen.”  
Hannah smacks her even as she keeps giggling.  
-  
Between finally putting the crib together and Mamrie taking them out to dinner to celebrate, Hannah misses her afternoon nap and by early evening she is completely exhausted. Grace is feeling it too after hauling furniture around all afternoon so they give in and go bed around nine.  
“We’re old and boring,” Grace jokes.  
“Nope, we’re just parents,” Hannah replies sleepily, and Grace will never get over how good that feels now. She gathers Hannah up in her arms and kisses her shoulder.  
“I love you so fucking much,” she whispers quietly and Hannah tuts at her.  
“What did I tell you about swearing around the baby?”  
“Says the woman who curses like a sailor every time we have sex!”  
Hannah laughs self-consciously. “I think we can agree that’s your fault, too.”  
“Probably,” Grace agrees, yawning. “Sweet dreams, babe.”  
“Night, Grace.”  
-  
She wakes to the sound of Goose barking frantically. When she opens her eyes it’s still pitch dark and the alarm clock on the bedside table is glowing 2:54 am.  
“Goose, shush!” She says, rubbing her eyes. She shifts closer to Hannah and her leg lands in a cool wetness. Still barely awake, she frowns as Goose whines urgently. She rolls over and switches on the lamp, wincing as the light hits her eyes. She turns back to Hannah and pulls the cover aside.  
Red.  
Seconds tick away as Grace’s brain fails to comprehend what she’s seeing until finally she looks up at Hannah’s face. She’s paler than Grace has ever seen and sweat is standing out on her brow.  
“Hannah?” Grace asks stupidly.  
Finally, her brain kicks into gear. She grabs her phone and dials 911.  
“911, what is your emergency?”  
“I just woke up and my wife is unconscious, there’s blood everywhere!”  
“Can you see the source of the bleeding?”  
“She’s pregnant!” Grace yells.  
“Is the bleeding vaginal?” The operator asks.  
“Yes!” Goose is still barking and jumping at the side of the bed, trying frantically to get to Hannah.  
“What’s your address?”  
After that everything goes blank for a while. All she can see is the dark stain that has spread from under Hannah’s hips and the shallow, laboured rise and fall of her chest. After an eternity of waiting, she hears the paramedics pound on the door and rushes to let them in.  
In the ambulance she tries to hold Hannah’s hand but the paramedic needs the room to work, so all she can do is sit in the corner and answer questions about allergies and medications and due dates and blood types until finally they reach the hospital.  
Hannah is whisked away from her and she stares at the doors as they swing shut, feeling cold all over.  
“Miss Helbig?”  
She turns.  
“They’re taking your wife straight to surgery,” the nurse tells her. “Can I get you some scrubs to wear?”  
Grace looks down and realises for the first time that she’s still in her sleepwear. The legs of her sweatpants are soaked in blood from thigh to knee and suddenly she can’t bear to have them touching her skin.  
“Yes please,” she says, trying to breathe normally.  
-  
After an hour of waiting it finally occurs to her to call Mamrie.  
“It’s four in the morning, Grace, what the fuck do you want?” Mamrie’s voice is blurry from sleep.  
“Can you go pick up Goose please?” Grace can hear the robotic monotone in her voice.  
“What? Grace, are you okay?”  
“I’m at the hospital, can you please go get Goose? I had to leave her.”  
“Grace, what the fuck, what’s going on?”  
As she opens her mouth to answer, a doctor comes over and flags her down.  
“I’ve got to go, Mamrie. We’re at Cedars-Sinai.”  
She hangs up on Mamrie’s protesting voice.  
“Miss Helbig?” The surgeon asks.  
“Yeah?”  
She doesn’t quite follow what he says next, but words like ‘abruption’ and ‘haemorrhage’ and ‘caesarean’ dance around her head, taunting her, and suddenly she’s being presented with a clipboard and asked to sign on the dotted line.  
“I’m sorry, what?” She asks.  
“We need your consent for the hysterectomy. It’s the safest option at this point.”  
Grace signs her name without reading the form.  
“Your daughter is being treated in the NICU,” the surgeon says, “but she’s doing okay. You should be able to see her soon.”  
Grace nods dumbly. Her phone is vibrating in her pocket but she ignores it in favour of watching the surgeon stride back through the double doors.  
-  
Mamrie shows up half an hour later, pale and shaky. She strides over to Grace, who is staring blankly at the wall.  
“Grace?”  
Grace looks at her, emotionless.  
“Goose is at my place. I saw the blood…what happened?”  
Grace feels like her voice is coming from a long way off as she answers.  
“Something went wrong. Hannah was bleeding when I woke up. They did a caesarean but the bleeding wouldn’t stop, so now they’re doing a hysterectomy.”  
Mamrie’s hand flies to her mouth.  
“Is Amy okay?”  
“They said she is,” Grace says, “I should be able to see her soon.”  
“But they’re both alive?” Mamrie asks.  
“Yeah,” Grace replies, and slowly realises what she said. “They’re both alive.”  
It gets fractionally easier to breathe after that. Mamrie sits down next to her and takes her hand and the two of them wait together for what feels like forever until finally a nurse comes out and tells Grace she can see Amy. When Mamrie stands too, the nurse apologises.  
“I’m sorry, it’s family only for the moment.”  
Mamrie nods. “Do you want me to start calling people?”  
Grace nods distractedly and follows the nurse.  
-  
Amy is tiny. Hannah’s bump had seemed huge in comparison to this tiny, tiny human in front of her.  
“She’s doing great,” the doctor says, “we don’t think the abruption did any damage to her at all. She’s a little underweight so we want to keep her here for a couple of days, just for observation, but so far you have a healthy baby girl.”  
“Can I hold her?” Grace asks. The doctor smiles.  
“Go ahead, mom.”  
Grace reaches down and carefully picks up her daughter. Amy opens one eye and sticks her tongue out a little as Grace sits in the armchair next to the incubator and settles her in the crook of her arm.  
Her arms wave in the air and Grace catches one hand, smiling as Amy grabs onto her finger. She strokes the back of her tiny hand gently and feels herself start to cry.  
“Hi Amy,” she whispers. “I’m here. Everything’s going to be okay.”  
-  
It’s almost ten am before they let her see Hannah. Mamrie took her phone hours ago and is fielding calls like a champ and Grace takes a moment to be grateful for how well Mamrie can keep her shit together in a crisis.  
She almost can’t bear to walk into the room but finally she forces herself through the door to where Hannah is lying.  
She’s still unconscious. Grace is so used to Hannah being pregnant that it feels unnatural to see the sheets lying flat over her midsection. There’s a little more colour in her cheeks but there are deep shadows under her eyes and she’s still far too pale.  
The surgeon talks her through Hannah’s condition and Grace tries to pay attention, but when he starts talking about oxygen deprivation and potential brain damage, Grace cuts him off.  
“Is she going to wake up?”  
He looks at her sympathetically.  
“We’re not sure.”  
-  
Grace splits her time between Amy and Hannah. Mamrie brings her spare clothes and answers her phone and books hotels for her family and Hannah’s sisters and by day three she’s almost used to the routine. She sits with Hannah for most of the morning, talking and reading to her, then she grabs a quick lunch in the cafeteria and heads for the NICU.  
“Hey baby,” she soothes as she lifts Amy into her arms, “today is your last day here. That means I can take you to meet your mom tomorrow. You give her an earful of those lungs of yours and I bet she’ll wake up in no time.”  
As though in response, Amy starts to cry. Grace settles into the chair, accepts a bottle from the nurse and watches, captivated, as Amy feeds vigorously.  
She sits quietly holding her daughter for a while until she feels her eyelids start to droop, and then she carefully puts Amy back into the incubator and leans back in the chair for a nap.  
“Miss Helbig?”  
She starts awake and looks at the clock. She was asleep for forty minutes. Automatically she checks on Amy and then turns her attention to the voice that woke her.  
Hannah’s doctor is looking at her with an expression of such grave compassion that she doesn’t even need to hear the words. He opens his mouth to speak and she cuts across him.  
“How?” She asks blankly.  
He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. “A blood clot formed around Hannah’s incision site and it went to her brain. We did everything we could to save her, but unfortunately she died a few minutes ago. I’m so sorry.”  
She nods and stares at him until he leaves.  
She doesn’t feel anything. It doesn’t feel real. Maybe she’s still asleep, maybe if she waits long enough she’ll wake up and it’ll be time to take Amy to see Hannah and she’ll hear their daughter’s voice and open her eyes and they can go home and get on with being a family and-  
She doesn’t know how long she sits there, staring at Amy, before Mamrie’s voice snaps her out of it.  
“Grace?”  
Grace looks at her.  
“What’s wrong?”  
Grace laughs abruptly.  
“Hannah died.” It feels ridiculous to say. She doesn’t know why Mamrie reacts so violently, why she gasps and covers her mouth as she starts to cry, when it’s clearly too ridiculous to be true. Hannah would never leave her. Someone obviously made a mistake. She opens her mouth to explain that to Mamrie and everything goes black.


	9. Chapter 9

Her mom picks them up the next evening and drives them home. Grace sits in the back and watches Amy sleep and neither of them says a word. Grace hasn’t spoken once since she passed out in the NICU.  
They pull into the driveway and Grace carries Amy, still in her car seat, into the house for the first time.  
Her mom makes them some tea and Grace sits in silence, holding the too-hot mug tightly, watching her daughter breathe.  
“Do you want me to stay tonight?”  
Grace shakes her head.  
“I don’t think you should be alone, Gracie. I can call Tim, or Mamrie?”  
Grace speaks for the first time in nearly 24 hours.  
“Not tonight, Mom. I want to be alone with my daughter.”  
Theresa frowns but doesn’t argue.  
“I’ll come over in the morning then,” she offers.  
“Fine,” Grace replies. She keeps her eyes on Amy as her mom gathers her stuff together. As long as she can see Amy, she feels like she can keep it together.  
“I love you, Grace,” her mom says and hugs her head awkwardly.  
“Love you too,” Grace replies automatically.  
And then they’re alone. Amy is still asleep and Grace watches the tiny movement of her chest as she breathes.  
Finally she gets up and goes to the kitchen to dump her mug in the sink. She finds a note next to it.  
Grace,  
I went shopping for you. The fridge is stocked and you’ve got enough formula for at least a couple of weeks. There are spare bottles in the cupboard and the sterilizing solution is under the sink. If you run out of anything let me know and I’ll bring it over. Call me when you’re ready.  
Mamrie  
xx  
She looks at Amy, making sure nothing has changed in the 10 seconds it took to read the note, and pulls out her phone to text Mamrie.  
Can you bring Goose back?  
The reply comes almost immediately.  
Sure. Now?  
Give me an hour  
See you then.  
Amy stirs, waving one arm aimlessly in the air. Grace quickly prepares a bottle and as Amy wakes up properly, Grace lifts her from the car seat and sits on the sofa to feed her. When she finishes, Grace just holds her, rocking gently, until she falls asleep again.  
Once she drifts off Grace can’t avoid it any more. She takes Amy into the bedroom and lays her gently in the crib, not looking at the bed. She takes a deep breath, preparing herself for the sight of the blood-stained mattress and turns.  
It’s not there. The frame is empty and there’s a brand new mattress, still in plastic, leaning against the far wall. Mamrie must have replaced it.  
Grace doesn’t react. She doesn’t feel anything. She hasn’t felt anything since yesterday.  
She unwraps the mattress as quietly as she can and hauls it onto the bed, then puts clean sheets on it.  
She checks on Amy again and decides it’s probably safe to go to the bathroom.  
As she washes her hands she looks at Hannah’s toothbrush, standing companionably next to hers in the bright blue container on the shelf. She dries her hands and goes back to the bedroom, making sure that Amy is still breathing. Hannah’s jacket is draped over the chair in the corner and Grace turns her back on it.  
She hears Mamrie’s key in the door and goes out into the living room, closing the bedroom door behind her and kneeling to greet Goose so she won’t bark and wake Amy.  
“Where’s your mom?” Mamrie asks.  
“I asked her to leave.” Goose finally calms down and looks around the room before cocking her head inquisitively at Grace.  
“Okay,” Mamrie says, “I won’t stay long.”  
Grace nods. She knew Mamrie would understand.  
“Listen, Grace. Your priority right now is obviously Amy, so if you want I can take care of the arrangements for the funeral?”  
Grace almost asks what she’s talking about.  
“Yeah,” she says instead, “that would be great.”  
Mamrie wants to hug her, Grace can tell, but thankfully she knows better and instead just grabs her keys and heads for the door.  
“I’ll be around tomorrow to make you dinner, okay?”  
“Okay,” Grace agrees and watches Mamrie leave.  
It’s been almost two minutes since she checked on Amy. She goes back to the bedroom and peers in, blocking Goose with her leg. Amy is fine.  
She sits down on the sofa. Hannah’s keys, wallet and phone are in a small purple dish on the coffee table. She ignores them.  
Goose wanders around the room, peering into corners and sniffing at the door before coming up to Grace and whining softly.  
“Hannah isn’t here,” Grace tells the dog and Goose’s ears prick forward at Hannah’s name. She looks at the door expectantly and then back to Grace, before going back to searching the house for her missing owner.  
Grace doesn’t know how long she sits in silence before she hears Amy start to cry through the baby monitor. She goes through to the bedroom and lifts her gently from the crib, wrinkling her nose automatically at the smell of dirty diaper.  
Grace takes Amy through to the other room and puts her back in the car seat while she unrolls the padded changing mat on the kitchen counter. Goose sniffs excitedly at the bottom of the seat and watches curiously as she changes Amy’s diaper. Once she’s done Grace picks her daughter up and soothes her until she stops crying, and then sits on the sofa and lays Amy in her lap.  
“Goose, this is Amy,” Grace says, one hand on Goose’s collar just in case. The dog sniffs delicately at Amy’s feet and knees before licking them once and lying happily at Grace’s feet. Amy gurgles quietly as Grace cleans the dog spit off her leg.  
The room slowly fades into darkness as Grace sits in silence, watching Amy squint and kick and wave her arms randomly. She leans over to switch on the lamp, making sure she doesn’t disturb Hannah’s notepad from where it lies next to the lamp’s power cord.  
By the time 2 am rolls around she knows she should sleep, but she can’t quite bring herself to lie in that bed, and Amy has fallen asleep again on her lap.  
She tries to think about it.  
Hannah is gone.  
Nope. The idea is just so completely contrary to everything she knows about the world that she can’t make it seem real. Hannah swore to stay with her forever and Hannah would never break a promise to her, so clearly the universe is just wrong. Any minute now Hannah is going to walk through the door and kiss her hello and if Grace has to sit here all night until that happens, she will.  
Any minute now.  
Amy wakes up again around four and Grace makes another bottle for her. She carries Amy out onto the deck and feeds her as the sky turns orange-gold. Goose follows them out and lies at her feet, panting happily. Grace holds her daughter and watches the sunrise spill red over the horizon, feeling nothing except the empty space next to her where Hannah should be.  
-  
The funeral goes by in a blur. Grace has vague impressions of Hannah’s sisters hugging her and crying, of Tim and John flanking her as though afraid she’d pass out again, of the stream of well-wishers that murmur pointless condolences until they all melt into one meaningless noise.  
What she does remember is the first moment she feels the rage.  
It’s during the reception and someone she vaguely recognises shakes her hand and mumbles something useless, then gives an awkward smile and says “At least she’s in a better place.”  
Suddenly Grace feels awake. And angry.  
A better place? Somewhere Hannah would rather be than here, with her and Amy? As if there were any place in any world, anywhere, that Hannah would choose over them? Grace knows in her bones that if there were any kind of life after death, Hannah would tear the universe apart to get back to them and this idiot has the gall to stand there and tell her that she’s in a better place?  
“Excuse me,” she says coldly and walks away before she stabs him with a steak knife.  
The anger doesn’t go away. The reception finally drags to a close and Grace takes Amy back from her mom and drives home, gripping the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles go white.  
Hannah is gone.  
It finally feels real.  
Hannah is gone and Grace is livid with rage.  
They get home and she settles Amy in her crib for the night before pacing wildly around the house, fists clenched. She wants to throw things, to break windows, to scream at the top of her lungs but she can’t because Amy is asleep and everything is about Amy now even though Amy killed her wife and-  
She freezes. Her heartbeat thunders in her ears.  
“I love my daughter,” she says out loud, and it’s true, she does. But she can’t unthink the thought and it’s slowly dawning on her just how angry she is at Amy.  
“I love my daughter,” she insists again, but it doesn’t stop her thinking that if Amy had never existed, Hannah would still be with her.  
“I love my daughter,” she whispers brokenly, but it’s too late. She loves Hannah more, and she’s never going to forgive Amy for taking that away from her. She feels something shatter inside her at the realisation.  
-  
The rage simmers under her skin for days, receding only when the guilt overwhelms her temporarily and then returning full force. She feels like she’s on fire. She hasn’t slept since the funeral and she’s refusing to let Mamrie or her mom come over.  
By the fourth day she feels unhinged. The world has taken on a slightly blurry, unreal quality. Everything feels distant, like she’s floating. There are deep red crescents in her palms from clenching her fists and she’s chewed the inside of her lip bloody.  
Amy is crying in the bedroom and Grace stares toward the door, swaying slightly. The world goes blank for a second and suddenly there’s a freshly-made bottle on the counter. She picks it up and walks toward the bedroom.  
Goose stands in the doorway, blocking her entrance. Her hackles are up and she’s growling menacingly. Grace stops and looks at her curiously.  
“Move, dog,” she says and her voice echoes weirdly in her head. She steps forward and Goose snaps at her, baring her teeth and growling even louder.  
“Goose, I have to feed Amy!” She looks down at the bottle in her hand.  
She blinks.  
She isn’t holding a bottle. She’s holding a knife.  
She drops it in horror and backs away from the bedroom. Goose stares at her, teeth still bared as she drops to her knees and breaks into sobs.  
It’s only when Goose stops growling that she realises Amy isn’t even crying.  
-  
Once everything is ready she calls Mamrie.  
“Hey, can you take Amy and Goose for a day or two?”  
She tries to keep her voice normal.  
“Sure, Grace,” Mamrie says without hesitation and Grace suddenly realises she hasn’t thanked her for her unflinching support. Mamrie lost Hannah too and she hasn’t so much as frowned in Grace’s presence.  
“I think I just need a couple of nights off,” Grace says, hating herself with every word.  
“I can come pick them up in twenty minutes,” Mamrie assures her.  
“Thanks Mames,” she says and hangs up.  
She picks Amy up, aware that Goose is watching her closely.  
“I love you, Amy,” she says, trying not to cry, “I love you so much. Please remember that.”  
She kisses her daughter tenderly and puts her down before hugging Goose tightly.  
“Thank you,” she whispers fiercely, and Goose whines in confusion and licks her face urgently.  
Mamrie turns up exactly on time and loads Amy and Goose into her car.  
“Get some sleep, Grace,” she says gently, “you look awful.”  
“That’s the plan,” Grace lies.  
She waves them off until the car turns the corner and then goes back into the house and grabs her suitcase. She takes a deep breath and signs the paperwork her lawyer drew up for her. She folds it neatly, puts it in an envelope and scrawls Mamrie’s address on the front.  
She leaves her car and takes a cab to LAX, stopping only to post the letter. She wonders briefly if any of them will ever forgive her.  
-  
It’s dark when the plane touches down in Heathrow. She always forgets how far outside London the airport actually is and it’s almost midnight by the time she reaches the hotel.  
She loves London and although she’s ashamed to admit it, she loves it more now because it’s a place that reminds her of just Hannah, not Hannah-and-Amy. She checks in, goes to her room and turns her phone off before collapsing on the bed, fully dressed.  
She misses Amy already, but she knows this is the right thing to do.  
When she wakes up the next morning she has 53 missed calls. She gets dressed and checks the first message on her voicemail.  
“Grace, where are you?” Mamrie sounds concerned. “Call me!”  
She figures it took a while to figure things out and skips ahead a few messages.  
“Grace, what the fuck?! I got fucking custody papers for me and Tim in the mail this morning! Where are you? Come home right now!”  
She skips ahead a few more.  
“Grace, please at least let me know you’re alive,” Mamrie’s voice is cracking on this one and she can hear Tim swearing in the background. “Please tell me I didn’t lose both of you.”  
Grace bites her lip, hard, in an effort not to cry. She deletes the rest of the messages without listening to them and sends a single text.  
I’m not coming back. Don’t look for me.  
She throws her phone in the trash can, grabs her suitcase and doesn’t look back as she walks out of the room.  
-  
It’s a year to the day since Hannah died. She comes back from work to the tiny house she shares with three other people and jumps in the shower, scrubbing eight hours’ worth of sweat from her skin. She tries to avoid her reflection as she towels off but it’s impossible not to compare herself to the Grace from a year ago. Her hair is brown now and much shorter, and her formerly athletic frame is almost unhealthily thin. She doesn’t think her own mother would recognise her.  
She sits in her room and tries to watch TV to distract herself but it’s no use. She doesn’t own a computer any more, but she does have a smartphone. She opens the YouTube app and enters Hannah’s name into the search bar, half expecting the channel to no longer exist. When it pops up she watches every single video of Hannah right up until the one where they announced the pregnancy. She’s about to throw her phone aside when she notices two videos that have thumbnails of Mamrie’s face. She taps on the first, dated two days after Hannah died.  
“Hey guys,” Mamrie looks broken and Grace realises again that she wasn’t the only one who lost someone they loved that day.  
“Um, so, a lot of you have noticed that all three of us went dark a few days ago. Um…Hannah…”  
Mamrie takes a deep breath and Grace can see her chewing on the inside of her cheek in an effort not to break down.  
“Something went wrong with the pregnancy. They had to do an emergency caesarean. Amy is okay, but…”  
She takes another deep breath.  
“Hannah died a couple of days ago.” Grace wonders if that was the first time Mamrie had said the words out loud.  
“Obviously none of us are going to be online for a while, maybe ever. I just wanted let you guys know and say thank you for all your support. I know Hannah loved this community and I just…”  
Mamrie shakes her head. There’s a cut and Mamrie is back, and it’s obvious she stopped filming to cry.  
“Be good to each other, guys. Hannah left the world a better place than she found it, and I can’t think of a better way to honour her memory.”  
Grace wipes the tears from her cheeks and breathes deeply, trying to get herself under control. She scrolls down to the final video, dated a month after she left Los Angeles.  
She hesitates for a moment before tapping on Mamrie’s face.  
“Grace,” Mamrie says, “I hope you see this. We’ve tried every other way we can think of to find you. Please come home. We’re not mad, I promise. Just come home and everything will be okay.”  
Mamrie leans off-screen for a moment and then lifts Amy into view. Grace gasps and drinks in the sight of her daughter smiling happily as she sucks at Mamrie’s hand.  
“We miss you, Gracie. Amy needs her mom. Please, come home!”  
Grace doesn’t hear the rest of what Mamrie says. She’s too busy staring at her daughter. It’s hard to be sure on the tiny screen, but she thinks Amy has a freckle on the end of her nose, just like Hannah.  
She wants nothing more at that moment than to get on a plane and fly back to Los Angeles, but she gave up the right to be around her daughter the second she picked up that knife, and that hasn’t changed.  
Her gaze slides to the gold wedding ring on her left hand. She pulls it off her finger and stares at it through her tears, reading the inscription on the inside.  
I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my Harto)


	10. Epilogue

She hates flying and she can’t help but add ‘making her get on a plane’ to the number of things she plans to yell at her mother for. She makes her way through customs and out of the airport before she turns her phone on. She has 14 messages from her aunt Mamrie and none from her dad. She hopes he stops being mad at her by the time she comes home.  
They’ve known where Grace is for four years. Mamrie’s brother-in-law works for the State Department and risked his job to find out which embassy she’d renewed her passport at. Her dad didn’t want to know and Amy understood that he was still mad at his sister for leaving, but she has a right to know where her mom is. Her dad disagreed and the resulting fight lasted nearly six months.  
Well fuck him. She’s 18 now and she’s worked all summer for the last three years to save up for this trip. Her dad tried for forbid her from going but this time she didn’t need his permission. She got a passport and a plane ticket and when her dad pointed out that London was a big place, Mamrie had sheepishly produced an address. She’d hired a private detective in London to track Grace down and when her dad had started yelling Mamrie had just said “Tim, you knew this day was coming. This way is safer than letting an angry teenager storm around London on her own.”  
She negotiates the London Underground with ease. In one of her notebooks, Amy’s mom had written ‘the outline of zone 2 is a lion!’ and now that she’s seen the map she gets it. It really does look like a lion.  
She loves these moments, where she reads some idle thought her mom scribbled down 20 years ago and totally understands it. It makes her feel close to Hannah. She has four unread notebooks left at home out of the two boxes full she got for her birthday, and to be honest she doesn’t want to read them. She wants there to be something left to discover about the woman who gave birth to her.  
She shakes her head to clear it as the train pulls into her station. It’s raining hard outside and she pulls up the hood on her faded old Camp Takota sweater. There’s a line of taxis outside the station and she jumps into one and gives the address.  
She’s shivering, and she’s pretty sure it’s not from the cold. She’s heard about Grace Helbig her whole life and now she’s moments away from finally meeting the woman who ran rather than raise her. For a long time she blamed herself. If her mom hadn’t died giving birth to her, none of this would have happened. That thought hurts, though, so for the last few years she’s chosen to be angry instead.  
She catches sight of her reflection in the cab window. The black dye in her hair is growing out but her natural colour is dark enough that you can’t really tell. Her nose stud flashes in the raindrops scattered over the window and her habitual scowl peers back at her.  
She looks kind of like Grace when she scowls and that makes her even more pissed off.  
The taxi pulls up at the end of the street and she passes the guy some of the weird multi-coloured bills they use here. She gets back some even weirder coins and mutters a reluctant thanks.  
She checks the door number written on her hand, hoists her backpack onto her shoulder and stomps up the street.  
It’s a nice house. A little small, but everything in England is smaller according to her mom’s notebooks. The front yard is neat and there is purple hyacinth growing in the borders.  
Hyacinths are her favourite flower. She starts to feel a little unsure of herself, but she’s come this far.  
She strides up the path to the front door and raises a hand to ring the bell, but thinks better of it and hammers on the door, ready to start yelling as soon as it opens.  
The door swings open. Amy opens her mouth-  
“May I help you?”  
It’s some middle-aged dude in a sweater vest. Amy just stands there, mouth hanging open. Of all the ways she imagined this going, this was not one of them.  
“Um, hi,” she manages, “I’m looking for Grace Helbig.”  
The guy is staring at her like she grew another head.  
“You’re Amy,” he says, sounding amazed, and she immediately takes a step back.  
“How the fuck do you know my name?”  
He laughs incredulously. “You look exactly like your mother.”  
Amy knows for a fact that apart from her natural hair and her frown, she looks nothing like Grace, which means…  
“You knew my mom? I mean, Hannah?”  
He shakes his head. “I never met her, but I know her face very well. Grace will be home soon. Would you like to come in and have some tea?”  
Suddenly this feels very real. Her instinct is to run, but she refuses to be that hypocritical, so she nods and follows him into the house.  
“I’m James,” he says, offering his hand.  
“Amy,” she shakes his hand and he smiles at her. She perches on the edge of an easy chair as he goes through to the kitchen and starts pulling out mugs and boiling water. After a few minutes he comes back and hands her a mug of tea.  
They smile at each other awkwardly for a moment.  
“Um, dude, I don’t mean to be rude, but who are you?”  
He laughs again, self-consciously.  
“Sorry, I should have said. I’m Grace’s partner,” he says.  
Amy’s breath leaves her like she’s been punched. Her whole life she’s heard about the epic love her moms had for each other and how when Hannah died it completely destroyed Grace to the point she couldn’t even be a mom anymore and yet she’s clearly over it enough to shack up with some British guy. James must see some of the turmoil on her face because he waves his hands anxiously.  
“Amy, you mustn’t think Grace has forgotten about Hannah, or you. Please, just…I’m not the right person to explain this, it isn’t my place.”  
He looks conflicted for a moment and then turns towards the door on the far side of the room.  
“Let me show you something.”  
He opens the door and leads her through a corridor and up some stairs until they’re standing in front of another door, this one with a keyhole. He reaches up and pulls a key from on top of the frame and unlocks it, before gesturing for her to enter.  
The first this she sees when she enters is the sunrise. One entire wall has been painted to show the sun coming up over the sea and Amy recognises the scene instantly. She has a photo on her bedroom wall that her mom took on their honeymoon that shows exactly the same view. She’s always felt a connection to it and seeing it writ large like this, she starts to tear up without really knowing why.  
“Grace and I have only been together a couple of years,” James says quietly, “but I’ve known her since she moved here. When she first came to London she and I shared a house with two other friends. She was in pieces back then and none of us knew why. She wouldn’t talk about herself, her life, at all, but we could all see she was in real pain.”  
Amy clenches her fists and takes several deep breaths. James keeps talking, his tone sympathetic.  
“We knew she was married because she wears a ring and we figured out pretty quickly that she’d been widowed, but I didn’t hear Hannah’s name or find out about you until she’d been here almost five years.”  
Amy finally looks away from the mural, only to see the other walls are covered in photos. She recognises some of them, including the photo of her moms and her aunt Mamrie on the first day of shooting their movie, but some of them are new. She walks up to one and bites her lip, hard.  
Her moms are sitting on the couch in their house, the one she owns, now that she’s 18. Hannah is pregnant with her. Grace has both hands on Hannah’s stomach and is looking at her wife with absolute love and devotion, and at their feet sits Goose, looking up at them with her dumb doggy grin. For some reason, the sight of the dog is what finally breaks her resolve not to cry. Goose has been dead for eight years now but she still misses that stupid dog every day.  
James pats her shoulder awkwardly as she cries and Amy can’t help but think of another thought in her mom’s notebooks.  
It’s not that British people don’t have emotions, it’s just that they’re really not good at expressing them! Maybe they should teach it in the schools?  
After a couple of minutes she pulls herself together.  
“Why did she leave?” She asks James. “Did she ever tell you?”  
He hesitates.  
“Yes,” he admits, “she told me. Something happened a couple of weeks after Hannah died, but… look, it really isn’t my place to say. I’m sorry.”  
She shakes her head. She’s starting to feel like the walls are closing in on her. Maybe her dad was right, maybe this was a bad idea. She’s beginning to realise that the ideas she’s held about her parents for so long don’t exactly match reality.  
“I need to get out of here,” she mumbles, and pushes past James. She goes back down the stairs and heads for the front door when she hears the key turn in the lock.  
She freezes as the door opens and Grace backs into the room, shaking her umbrella off outside the door.  
“James?” She calls over her shoulder and Amy has heard that voice in videos her whole life but hearing it person makes her gasp.  
Grace turns and looks at her.  
Amy knows she has her mom’s eyes, she’s always liked the electric blue colour, but right now she wishes she didn’t because as soon as their eyes meet Grace turns white.  
She doesn’t look like a woman pushing 50, Amy notices with weird detachment. Her hair is darker than it is in Amy’s photos and her skin is paler, probably from living in a country where the sun only shines on special occasions, but otherwise age doesn’t seem to have touched her all that much.  
“Hi,” Amy says. James comes into the room behind her.  
“Amy’s here,” he points out needlessly. There’s a long moment of silence and he shuffles uncomfortably.  
“I’ll go and make some more tea,” he says and goes into the kitchen.  
Grace stares at her for a long time before speaking.  
“You look just like Hannah.” There’s wonder in her tone  
“I know,” Amy says awkwardly.  
“Why are you here?” Grace asks timidly.  
“Why did you leave?” Amy retorts automatically and winces.  
Grace looks down and doesn’t answer for a long moment.  
“I didn’t… I wasn’t fit to be a parent.”  
“Your husband said something happened, that it wasn’t his place to tell me.”  
“He’s not my husband,” Grace says and Amy’s gaze flicks to the gold ring on her left hand. She’s wearing an identical ring on a chain around her neck and suddenly it feels hot against her skin.  
“Will you tell me? Please?” Her voice cracks on the last word and Grace takes an automatic step towards her before stopping herself.  
“Okay. Okay. Let’s sit down.”  
They sit on opposite sides of the room. Grace takes a deep breath and starts to talk.  
It takes less than fifteen minutes. Amy is amazed she isn’t screaming by the end. Her dad was right, she wasn’t ready for this.  
When Grace finishes talking she looks at Amy, half ashamed and half hopeful.  
“I’m so sorry, Amy,” she says, “I’ve wanted to reach out to you for such a long time, I just didn’t think I had the right. But you’re here, and there’s so much I want to ask you-“  
Amy stands abruptly.  
“I’ve got to go. This was a bad idea.”  
Devastation flashes across Grace’s expression, just for a moment, before it’s hidden.  
“Okay.” She says quietly and Amy kind of hates her for giving up so easily. She grabs her backpack and opens the front door.  
“It was so good to see you,” her mom says in a small voice. Amy chokes back a sob and slams the door behind her.


	11. Alternate Ending

It doesn’t stop being scary. In fact, now that Grace is invested in this pregnancy it’s more overwhelming than ever. She finds herself constantly thinking about baby-proofing, about which books they’ll use to teach her to read, about college funds, and by the time Hannah is in her eighth month Grace just wants to wrap her in bubble wrap and have her carried everywhere on a sedan chair. She wakes up every morning curled protectively around her wife, with their tangled fingers resting over Amy.  
Grace is grateful that Hannah is a deep sleeper. She’s developed the habit of waking just before dawn and talking to her daughter while Hannah is still dead to the world.  
“Hey Amy,” she murmurs, stroking Hannah’s stomach as the sky slowly turns from purple to red.  
“It’s your mom again. The cool one, not the dorky one. How you doing in there?”  
She half expects Amy to kick in response and laughs a little.  
“Okay, the slightly less dorky mom. You’re getting so big, kiddo! Your mom keeps complaining that you’re making her feel like a walrus, but don’t listen. She’s beautiful and she loves you like crazy. We both do.”  
Grace glances up at the window as the first soft beams of morning light creep through.  
“Do you see that? Your mom told me something once and I can’t think of a better promise to make to you. Every day the sun rises, Amy, is a day I will love you. I promise.”  
Amy does kick, then, and Grace laughs as Hannah grunts and frowns in response.  
“If you’re half as adorable as your mom, we are in so much trouble,” she observes.  
-  
Three weeks from Hannah’s due date they start putting furniture together. Mamrie comes over and the two of them install Hannah in the easy chair to ‘supervise’ while they try and figure out the instructions.  
“Where’s the screwdriver?” Grace asks, holding two pieces together with one hand. Hannah kicks it over and Grace attempts to screw the pieces together.  
“Shit,” she says.  
“This is like trying to reading fucking hieroglyphics!” Mamrie exclaims.  
“Guys!” Hannah scolds, covering her belly protectively, “Did you not read that article I sent you? Amy can hear you swearing!”  
“Sorry babe,” Grace says distractedly. “This screwdriver is the wrong size. Where’s your toolkit?”  
“In the closet, the top shelf on the left,” Hannah replies and Grace goes to find it.  
“Hannah, it’s not here!” She yells, and hears Hannah groan in response. After a moment Hannah appears in the doorway.  
“I said left, Grace,” she says sarcastically and reaches up to grab the heavy box. Grace grabs her wrist.  
“Nope! Pregnant ladies do not lift things. Go sit back down.”  
“I’m not an invalid, Grace,” Hannah grumbles.  
“No, you’re carrying precious cargo. Now sit your adorable ass down!”  
Hannah screws up her face in an effort not to smile and Grace leans down and kisses her, stroking her belly softly.  
“You two better not be making out in there!” Mamrie yells from the other room and Hannah giggles into the kiss.  
“You look beautiful today,” Grace says conversationally, “the sexiest pregnant walrus I’ve ever seen.”  
Hannah smacks her even as she keeps giggling.  
-  
Between finally putting the crib together and Mamrie taking them out to dinner to celebrate, Hannah misses her afternoon nap and by early evening she is completely exhausted. Grace is feeling it too after hauling furniture around all afternoon so they give in and go bed around nine.  
“We’re old and boring,” Grace jokes.  
“Nope, we’re just parents,” Hannah replies sleepily, and Grace will never get over how good that feels now. She gathers Hannah up in her arms and kisses her shoulder.  
“I love you so fucking much,” she whispers quietly and Hannah tuts at her.  
“What did I tell you about swearing around the baby?”  
“Says the woman who curses like a sailor every time we have sex!”  
Hannah laughs self-consciously. “I think we can agree that’s your fault, too.”  
“Probably,” Grace agrees, yawning. “Sweet dreams, babe.”  
“Night, Grace.”  
-  
She wakes to the sound of Goose barking frantically. When she opens her eyes it’s still pitch dark and the alarm clock on the bedside table is glowing 2:54 am.  
“Goose, shush!” She says, rubbing her eyes. She shifts closer to Hannah and her leg lands in a cool wetness. Still barely awake, she frowns as Goose whines urgently. She rolls over and switches on the lamp, wincing as the light hits her eyes. She turns back to Hannah and pulls the cover aside.  
Red.  
Seconds tick away as Grace’s brain fails to comprehend what she’s seeing until finally she looks up at Hannah’s face. She’s paler than Grace has ever seen and sweat is standing out on her brow.  
“Hannah?” Grace asks stupidly.  
Finally, her brain kicks into gear. She grabs her phone and dials 911.  
“911, what is your emergency?”  
“I just woke up and my wife is unconscious, there’s blood everywhere!”  
“Can you see the source of the bleeding?”  
“She’s pregnant!” Grace yells.  
“Is the bleeding vaginal?” The operator asks.  
“Yes!” Goose is still barking and jumping at the side of the bed, trying frantically to get to Hannah.  
“What’s your address?”  
After that everything goes blank for a while. All she can see is the dark stain that has spread from under Hannah’s hips and the shallow, laboured rise and fall of her chest. After an eternity of waiting, she hears the paramedics pound on the door and rushes to let them in.  
In the ambulance she tries to hold Hannah’s hand but the paramedic needs the room to work, so all she can do is sit in the corner and answer questions about allergies and medications and due dates and blood types until finally they reach the hospital.  
Hannah is whisked away from her and she stares at the doors as they swing shut, feeling cold all over.  
“Miss Helbig?”  
She turns.  
“They’re taking your wife straight to surgery,” the nurse tells her. “Can I get you some scrubs to wear?”  
Grace looks down and realises for the first time that she’s still in her sleepwear. The legs of her sweatpants are soaked in blood from thigh to knee and suddenly she can’t bear to have them touching her skin.  
“Yes please,” she says, trying to breathe normally.  
-  
After an hour of waiting it finally occurs to her to call Mamrie.  
“It’s four in the morning, Grace, what the fuck do you want?” Mamrie’s voice is blurry from sleep.  
“Can you go pick up Goose please?” Grace can hear the robotic monotone in her voice.  
“What? Grace, are you okay?”  
“I’m at the hospital, can you please go get Goose? I had to leave her.”  
“Grace, what the fuck, what’s going on?”  
As she opens her mouth to answer, a doctor comes over and flags her down.  
“I’ve got to go, Mamrie. We’re at Cedars-Sinai.”  
She hangs up on Mamrie’s protesting voice.  
“Miss Helbig?” The surgeon asks.  
“Yeah?”  
She doesn’t quite follow what he says next, but words like ‘abruption’ and ‘haemorrhage’ and ‘caesarean’ dance around her head, taunting her, and suddenly she’s being presented with a clipboard and asked to sign on the dotted line.  
“I’m sorry, what?” She asks.  
“We need your consent for the hysterectomy. It’s the safest option at this point.”  
Grace signs her name without reading the form.  
“Your daughter is being treated in the NICU,” the surgeon says, “but she’s doing okay. You should be able to see her soon.”  
Grace nods dumbly. Her phone is vibrating in her pocket but she ignores it in favour of watching the surgeon stride back through the double doors.  
-  
Mamrie shows up half an hour later, pale and shaky. She strides over to Grace, who is staring blankly at the wall.  
“Grace?”  
Grace looks at her, emotionless.  
“Goose is at my place. I saw the blood…what happened?”  
Grace feels like her voice is coming from a long way off as she answers.  
“Something went wrong. Hannah was bleeding when I woke up. They did a caesarean but the bleeding wouldn’t stop, so now they’re doing a hysterectomy.”  
Mamrie’s hand flies to her mouth.  
“Is Amy okay?”  
“They said she is,” Grace says, “I should be able to see her soon.”  
“But they’re both alive?” Mamrie asks.  
“Yeah,” Grace replies, and slowly realises what she said. “They’re both alive.”  
It gets fractionally easier to breathe after that. Mamrie sits down next to her and takes her hand and the two of them wait together for what feels like forever until finally a nurse comes out and tells Grace she can see Amy. When Mamrie stands too, the nurse apologises.  
“I’m sorry, it’s family only for the moment.”  
Mamrie nods. “Do you want me to start calling people?”  
Grace nods distractedly and follows the nurse.  
-  
Amy is tiny. Hannah’s bump had seemed huge in comparison to this tiny, tiny human in front of her.  
“She’s doing great,” the doctor says, “we don’t think the abruption did any damage to her at all. She’s a little underweight so we want to keep her here for a couple of days, just for observation, but so far you have a healthy baby girl.”  
“Can I hold her?” Grace asks. The doctor smiles.  
“Go ahead, mom.”  
Grace reaches down and carefully picks up her daughter. Amy opens one eye and sticks her tongue out a little as Grace sits in the armchair next to the incubator and settles her in the crook of her arm.  
Her arms wave in the air and Grace catches one hand, smiling as Amy grabs onto her finger. She strokes the back of her tiny hand gently and feels herself start to cry.  
“Hi Amy,” she whispers. “I’m here. Everything’s going to be okay.”  
-  
It’s almost ten am before they let her see Hannah. Mamrie took her phone hours ago and is fielding calls like a champ and Grace takes a moment to be grateful for how well Mamrie can keep her shit together in a crisis.  
She almost can’t bear to walk into the room but finally she forces herself through the door to where Hannah is lying.  
She’s still unconscious. Grace is so used to Hannah being pregnant that it feels unnatural to see the sheets lying flat over her midsection. There’s a little more colour in her cheeks but there are deep shadows under her eyes and she’s still far too pale.  
The surgeon talks her through Hannah’s condition and Grace tries to pay attention, but when he starts talking about oxygen deprivation and potential brain damage, Grace cuts him off.  
“Is she going to wake up?”  
He looks at her sympathetically.  
“We’re not sure.”  
-  
Grace splits her time between Amy and Hannah. Mamrie brings her spare clothes and answers her phone and books hotels for her family and Hannah’s sisters and by day three she’s almost used to the routine. She sits with Hannah for most of the morning, talking and reading to her, then she grabs a quick lunch in the cafeteria and heads for the NICU.  
“Hey baby,” she soothes as she lifts Amy into her arms, “today is your last day here. That means I can take you to meet your mom tomorrow. You give her an earful of those lungs of yours and I bet she’ll wake up in no time.”  
As though in response, Amy starts to cry. Grace settles into the chair, accepts a bottle from the nurse and watches, captivated, as Amy feeds vigorously.  
She sits quietly holding her daughter for a while until she feels her eyelids start to droop, and then she carefully puts Amy back into the incubator and leans back in the chair for a nap.  
“Miss Helbig?”  
She starts awake and looks at the clock. She was asleep for forty minutes. Automatically she checks on Amy and then turns her attention to the voice that woke her.  
Hannah’s surgeon smiles at her.  
“Your wife is awake. She’s asking for you.”  
Grace stares at him, uncomprehending, for a moment, before a brilliant smile blooms on her face. She stands up and starts for the door, before stopping.  
“Can I bring Amy?” She asks.  
“Sure!” The surgeon laughs.  
Grace picks up her daughter carefully and they head for Hannah’s room. The surgeon holds the door open for them and Grace steps inside.  
Hannah smiles tiredly at her. Her blue eyes are dull and sunken in their sockets, but they’re open.  
“Hey baby,” she croaks, and Grace chokes back a sob.  
“And hey, baby,” Hannah jokes, looking at Amy.  
“You asshole,” Grace scolds through her tears, “you scared the shit out of me!”  
-  
Hannah stays in hospital for another week before Grace’s mom drives them all home. When they arrive, Mamrie and Tim are waiting inside.  
“Hey Hannah!” Tim says, hugging her carefully.  
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” he whispers in her ear.  
“Me too,” Hannah says, hugging him back.  
Grace heads for the bedroom to dump their bags, taking a deep breath as she prepares for the sight of the bloodstained mattress. It’s not there. The frame is empty and there’s a brand new mattress, still in plastic, leaning against the far wall. Mamrie must have replaced it.  
She laughs in sheer relief and heads back out into the kitchen in time to see her mom hand Amy over to Tim.  
“Hey Amy,” he says cheerfully, “I’m your uncle Tim!”  
Grace walks over to Mamrie and hugs her, hard.  
“Thank you,” she says fiercely.  
“No problem,” Mamrie replies, kissing her cheek.  
Hannah takes Amy back from Tim, cradling her carefully, and looks over at her and Mamrie.  
“Where’s Goose?”  
“She’s outside,” Mamrie says, “I’ll go get her.”  
Hannah sits down gingerly and Grace joins her, wrapping one arm protectively around her shoulders as they both gaze down as Amy, smiling at her expression of vague constipation.  
There’s the sound of claws clicking on the deck and then Goose barrels into the room, barking frantically, and hurls herself at Hannah. Instinctively, Grace lifts Amy out of Hannah’s arms and stands up as the dog licks frantically at Hannah’s laughing face.  
“Goose, no!” Hannah protests as she’s enthusiastically welcomed home.  
Finally Goose calms a little and pokes her nose at Hannah’s newly-flat stomach before tilting her head inquisitively at her. Grace kneels next to Goose as Hannah grabs her collar, just in case.  
“Goose, this is Amy,” Grace says. The dog sniffs delicately at Amy’s feet and knees before licking them once and lying happily at Hannah’s feet. Amy gurgles quietly as Grace cleans the dog spit off her leg. She’s vaguely aware of her mom’s camera clicking away in the background as their family is finally reunited.  
It’s dark by the time they kick everybody out. Grace makes Hannah a smoothie since she can’t take her pain meds on an empty stomach, and then puts Amy down in her crib. Hannah’s face is showing her exhaustion, so they call it a night and climb into bed. Hannah falls asleep almost instantly, but Grace lies awake, listening to her and Amy breathe. By the time 2 am rolls around she knows she should sleep, but the last time she went to sleep in this room she woke up covered in Hannah’s blood, and even though she knows it’s ridiculous, she’s too scared to do it again.  
Amy wakes up around four and Grace takes her out into the kitchen so she won’t wake Hannah as she makes up a bottle for her. She carries Amy out onto the deck and feeds her as the sky turns orange-gold. Goose follows them out and lies at her feet, panting happily. Grace holds her daughter and watches the sunrise spill red over the horizon, feeling the exhaustion of the last couple of weeks roll over her.  
“Hey,” Hannah’s voice, scratchy with sleep, comes from the door. Goose doesn’t move, but her tail thumps happily on the wooden planks as Hannah joins them, sitting next to Grace and stroking Amy’s leg gently.  
“Hey,” Grace replies.  
“Couldn’t sleep?”  
Grace looks at Hannah. Her face is pink and healthy in the morning light, and her eyes have their familiar sparkle again, and Grace feels something inside her knit back together.  
“I love you,” she whispers. Hannah smiles at her, and whispers it back, and then they sit together in peaceful silence, watching the sun rise with their daughter.  
-  
Mamrie smiles as Amy steps up to the podium, practically vibrating with excitement. She makes sure the camera is recording and then focuses on her niece as she gives her valedictory speech. At eighteen, Amy looks so much like Hannah that they get mistaken for sisters sometimes, but her mannerisms are all Grace.  
After the speech Amy bounces over to them all, grinning widely.  
“That was awesome, kiddo!” Mamrie tells her and Amy wriggles with joy.  
Grace steps forward and hugs Amy tightly.  
“We’re so proud of you, baby girl,” she says, as Hannah nods and hugs her from the other side.  
The rest of the family joins in the hug and Amy laughs as Naomi and Tim mess up her carefully styled hair.  
“Guys, stop! My friends can see me!” Amy protests.  
“Amy, we got you something,” Hannah says as they release her, sharing a smile with Grace. Amy bounces excitedly as Hannah hands over a small, wrapped gift, and then tears the wrapping paper off impatiently.  
The box has the words Tiffany & Co stamped on the top and Amy glances up them, jaw dropped. Grace slides her hand into Hannah’s as they watch her open it and gently lift out the silver locket.  
Amy stares at it for a moment before carefully opening it and Grace sees tears spring to her eyes as she looks the photo inside. They’d debated for weeks on which one to use. Hannah had argued for the photo of the sunrise from their honeymoon, because Amy had always loved it, but eventually they had settled on the photo her mom had taken of the three of them and Goose, the day they got back from the hospital. Goose has been dead for eight years now, but they all still miss that dumb dog like crazy.  
“Thanks, guys,” Amy says in a choked up voice.  
“Turn it over,” Hannah instructs gently as Grace clears her throat, trying not to let her emotions overwhelm her. Mamrie is already crying and her mom is hugging Tim unconsciously.  
Amy flips the locket. Unlike the photo, Grace and Hannah had known instantly what they wanted to use for the inscription, and Grace strokes her wedding ring as Amy’s eyes widen in recognition.  
whatever a sun will always sing is you


End file.
